


We Were Nothing More Than Stardust

by AmbitiousWitch



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Diary/Journal, Epistolary, F/M, Gallifrey-Freeform, Gallifreyan!River, Human!Doctor, In Medias Res, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Child Abuse, Regeneration, Temporal Paradox, The Time War, Time Lord!Kovarian, Timey-Wimey, Unreliable Narrator, bootstrap paradox
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-10-18 05:12:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17574539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbitiousWitch/pseuds/AmbitiousWitch
Summary: Soulmates can transcend lives, times, space and species. They can be friends, lovers or enemies. I wish I had learned that before.In another life, River Song is born Riahvelsodva, a child of Gallifrey, at a time were children a forbidden, she is taken by Madame Kovarian, who thinks that a rare Child of the TARDIS could serve better to the propose of the Time Lords alive than dead.She grows up the same: as an assassin, a soldier, a weapon.But there are things that she can't ever get off of her head: the desire to know who her parents were and what the mark in her wrist means.She shouldn't have a soulmate mark.Yet the wordDoctoris tattoed on her wrist.Soulmates/Role Reversal AU. Gallifreyan!River + Human!Doctor





	1. Six Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to another product of my insomnia! This fic is a _very_ alternate universe, with a lot of changes, hundreds of Big Finish references and characters. And a lot longer than I originally intended it to be. Enjoy! Comments are very appreciated! Please support fanfic writers!
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to my beta [PairieDawn.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A woman carries the most dangerous weapon in the universe._
> 
>  
> 
> _A girl dies in a barn._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Music for this chapter:** [_No Need To Come Back_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8536dS0B-8) and [_The Warmwhole_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtSOtcawcfM) from _Interestellar._
> 
> Thanks to my beta [PairieDawn.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn)

She walks miles and miles to that old, abandoned building outside Arcadia. The sound of her TARDIS – her mother – like a cry behind her. Centuries ago, she swore never to come back to that place, as a promise to herself and her new found freedom.  Now she is back, carrying the most dangerous weapon in the universe.

The room where she used to sleep is the same, small and plain and with a ruined bed in the centre.  She knows how morbid it is to do this here, but it’s not like she is in the best of humours.

The Professor looks at the box, at the weapon that would destroy them all, Time Lords and Daleks alike, and the expression on her face doesn’t change. She has been fighting this war for a long time, almost as long as she had tried to avoid it, but it caught her in the end and took everything from her.

Lady Romana had been very clear, in all her desperation, that the Time War caught couldn’t continue and the Professor was the only one fast and pragmatic enough to see that it had to end this way.

After all, she has always been a psychopath, right?

“Do you really think that?” a soft voice says behind her, the Professor turns around, seeing a young woman sitting in the bed. She is young, tall and redhead.

“Who are you?” the Professor asks, eyeing the girl. How had she gotten here? This place was a desert.  How had she not _heard_ her?

“I’m just passing by.”  The girl smiles and the Professor frowns.

“In the middle of nowhere, while a war’s going on? How—Agh, never mind, get out of here.” _I have to finish this, there is no time to have compassion for some random—_

“No compassion, huh? That’s why you left her behind?” the girl says, her thick Earth Scottish accent rolling.

“Left behind who?” The Professor asks, not trying to shush her out anymore. Whatever if this kid wants to die here.

“The TARDIS,” the girl whispers in her ear but when the Time Lady turns around, she is again sitting in the bed. “You walked miles and miles to this place and left her behind. Didn’t want Mummy seeing you be naughty, Riah?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sure, the name you like is River, isn’t it?” The Time Lady freezes, the girl sings songs in a dreamy tune. “River Song, that’s the name in your head.”

“Shut up,” the Professor hisses, her hands gripping the box despite its high temperature. Wait, it wasn’t that high a second ago.  She glared at the Moment, who gave the Time Lady a sly smile.

“For someone that it’s supposed to be good with machines, you took quite a lot to figure it out.”

“Interfaces are normally flat and helpful, not annoying and putting their noses where they are not called,” the Professor says, but the Moment scoffs at the bad lie. Right, she has seen inside her head, she knows the discussions that she has had with her mother.

“Oh, I plan to help.”

“Then just activate and let’s be over with this,” the Professor snarled, the Moment gave her a sad look, making the Time Lady groan. “Really? You are a weapon of mass destruction and you suddenly have a conscience?”

“You must know better than anyone what that’s like, River.”

“ _Stop_ calling me that,” the Time Lady growled.

“Stop thinking yourself as River,” the Moment shrugged and her eyes glowed golden while the metal folds of the box closed almost crushing the Professor’s fingers. “I know what you are thinking right now, River, you are in automatic mode, thinking only of finishing the mission. But have you thought what would happen next? What would become of you after you kill them all? Daleks and Time Lords alike?”

“Well,” the Professor slaps her thighs with her hands,” then I won’t do it! I will let them continue with this stupid, useless burning, I would let them burn every timeline, every event in the universe. This is my last life, girl, do you think I care?” she spits.

“You do,” the Moment says bluntly, “Maybe you don’t care for the war, maybe you don’t care for anyone on this planet anymore or in the universe for that matter. But you are part of what happened, and what is being erased. Many lives that are vanishing are his and yours, aren’t they?” The Professor doesn’t answer and the girl takes the Time Lady’s wrist, lifting her sleeve. “So, there it is, still written even when he is dead by… What number it’s already? Twelve?”

“Stop it!”

“ _His_ lives are also erasing from time,” the Moment says as the Professor frees herself from her grip. “If you don’t care about dying, this is why are you doing it, you don’t want them to disappear, to never have happened.”

The Professor looks at the interface with rage, but then she sighs. The end of the universe and here she is, fighting with an AI disguised as an annoying Earth kid.

“Why do you care about my reasons? Whatever I do, they will die, I will die. And even if I live after this, it won’t be long.”

“And about your next life?”

The Professor tenses. “Time Lords don’t reincarnate.”

“How do you know that?”

“That’s what regeneration is for.”

“And yet you have soulmate marks, like all other species,” the Moment says and the Professor laughs bitterly.

“It’s always between our kind,” she resorts.

“Except for you,” the Moment says, her green eyes staring at her with pity.

“Except for me.” The Time Lady concludes, brushing the six letter word on her wrist.

 

* * *

 

 

“Please, Mummy, don’t leave me here!” the child screams as the woman pulls her towards the barn. She doesn't want to stay there, the sun burns and there is no sign of anyone in miles. Anyone except Madame Ko— Mummy, she is her mother, right? That’s what she always says.

“Enough!” the woman screams, taking the child by the shoulders and shaking her. “Do you think that the Daleks will be merciful to you, Riah? Do you think that the universe will? Remember from where you come from, girl, and why you are here. You are here to learn and by Rassilon, you will.”

With a final push, the little girl finds herself inside the dark barn, clutching the small bag that her mother had tied to her arm. She listens the sound of the ship leaving the place and starts to despair, kicking and punching the door with her fists.

“Let me out! Please Mummy, let me out! I’ll be good, I will fight the Daleks, please!”

But there is no reply, she has been left alone. She has never been alone; it’s always Mummy or one of the guards in the house. Always someone; why has Mummy left her alone now, what has she done wrong?

She opens the door, but there’s nobody outside, just the desert and the suns already going down. So she goes inside the barn again, holding her knees and crying. Mummy said she had to learn, but what? Wasn’t she good with her lessons? Wasn’t she good when the President came to see her and said she was ‘a nice subject’? What did she do wrong?

 _Maybe she was always going to leave me_ , she thinks, _after all, she always says that I’m too small and weak and nothing like the beautiful children of the Looms._

No, no, no, it couldn’t be. Mummy had saved her, she had given her a home, a purpose. Her parents were cruel and abandoned her, they had broken the law to create her and then rejected her because she wasn’t perfect. But Mummy had seen her potential, she had seen that Riah was able to do something. Mummy would never just leave her alone. This had to be some lesson.

Yes, that has to be.

With that thought she tries to go to sleep and the burning heat in the barn wakes her in the morning. Outside it’s worse, of course, but when the days pass, she rather prefers the cold of the night at that insufferable heat. At least with the cold Riah can pretend that she is at home.

When the week ends, she has eaten up the little food she had in the bag and has drunk almost all the water. _Weak_ , the little girl thinks as she coughs while entering the barn after a sandstorm ruined her chances to go outside and try to hunt something. But now that she thinks about it, what can she hunt in this hell? Vultures? They will probably eat her first.

Night falls and she sleeps clutching her bag and wishing her teeth to stop rattling. It has been a week, just a simple week, she is Gallifreyan, as small and imperfect as she is, she can’t be so _weak._

She hates it, she _hates_ it.

Riah tries to remember when she wakes up; how to hunt, how to find water. She digs up in every corner and tries to find any reptile, any bug or bird to eat, but the desert seems to want to kill her as slowly and painfully as it can.

Two days later, she is lying down in the barn, her lips parted for the thirst but her body trembling because of the cold of the night. She can’t move except for the trembling, she can’t talk because her throat is sore, but all she wants is to scream.

Her mother left her, just like the other one, she left her to die in that horrible place. She hadn’t come back to her even when she tried everything to survive and fulfill her lesson! Why?! Why does everyone leave her? Why doesn’t anyone want her? Why does she have to _need_ them, anyway?

The impotence goes along with the pain, such a funny word: impotence. Mummy once had explained that that was what the High Council felt about the Daleks. Impotence, because they never stopped and Mummy had told Riah that she wanted to her to be the one to stop them.

What happened with that, when she had stopped thinking that?

The rage overwhelms her and she finally screams and coughs again, blood coming from her mouth.

If Madame Kovarian had left her just like her biological parents did, then what was the point of taking her? What was the point of _her?_

And Riah, realizes: she doesn’t care.

She just wants to live. To not be weak anymore, why does she had to born with this weak body?

So she screams and coughs and _burns._

And suddenly something brighter than the sun blinds her and she is not so cold anymore.

“Riah?” Madame Kovarian enters to the barn two days later, Riah is down in the ground, eating what it’s left of the last vulture she had hunted. These hands – _her_ hands – are longer and stronger than her other ones and she is quicker.   Catching that blasted bird wasn’t as difficult as before.

“Madame?” the girl says and stands up, her hands still covered in grease and blood. Madame’s gaze inspects her and she knows she looks different: taller, stronger. Older. Her hair short and straight, her eyes darker. Eyes that look directly at her caretaker, now as sharp and hard as hers. She no longer is the fragile child of pale blonde curls and little bird bones.

“Do you know what happened?” Madame Kovarian asks slowly, like if she fears that Riah doesn’t understand her language anymore.

“I died,” the girl states bluntly. Because she did, it felt like it, it felt like dying in fire.

“Yes and no, remember what I told you about the Time Lord Academy?” the girl nods. “Well, our President recognized the importance of your mission and gave you some regenerations.”

“How many?”

“Six, we can’t give you twelve, of course, you still have to know your place.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Riah asks, her voice dead and Madame Kovarian kneels at her height.

“So, you would understand that your lives are precious, Riah, if you find yourself in a situation like this one again, you must do everything to preserve your lives, is that understood?” The girl nods. “Your mission it’s very important, my girl. Now, let’s go home.”

“Yes, Madame.”

Madame Kovarian doesn’t seem to care about Riah calling her that or if she does, the girl never notices it. She just knows three things:

One: She will never call her Mummy again.

Two: She will do with her lives whatever she wants.

And three: She will get off this planet.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * I was kind of doubtful about how to tag some things, but since River is technically a Time Lord by everything but a title in canon, I decided to put Gallifreyan.
>   * Kovarian is a Time Lord and is in one of her earlier regenerations so she doesn't look like Frances here. [This is how she currently looks.](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/indianajones/images/c/c2/Spalko2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/333?cb=20080513183728)
>   * The thing of River calling Kovarian 'mummy' it's actually kind of hinted in Big Finish where River calls her 'mummy dearest' sarcastically and also River's sisters calling Kovarian either mother or mummy.
>   * Like my other fic, this one will be non-linear, just in case, it gets confusing for anyone.
> Comments are appreciated!



	2. A Number

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Riah is not two years in her second body when she asks what the mark in her wrist means._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **River's second body:** [Shailene Woodley.](https://assets.metrolatam.com/gt/2016/10/10/2qijkhn0ctpwx8acoz5fxkpvtmr4nbhdi2p6ywc6dt53ifatj4opdk0zx7ytbg-1200x600.jpg)
> 
> **Music for this chapter:**
> 
> **Fifth and sixth scenes:** [_Mary Shelley_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxKZxDTVB_E&list=PL7-lFGlqsMm3IOJoQKmPKUacnlD5fOchX&index=2&t=0s) from, well, _Mary Shelley._
> 
> Thanks to my beta, PairieDawn.

 

 

“I’m sorry that everything is in the dark!” the woman apologizes while opening the door. “My grandfather mustn’t have arrived yet.”

Riah just offers the woman a courteous smile, one of the many she learned over the years, but not entirely false. She likes Doctor Campbell, as peculiar as her sudden, selfless kindness appears to her. She follows the human around while she lights up the house.

“All right! Make yourself at home, dear… Sorry, I forgot your name again,” the woman touches her forehead as a gesture of embarrassment.

“Rianna,” the Time Lady replies, the name still feels strange in her mouth, but she couldn’t use hers. Nor the longer or the shorter version, it feels too personal and dangerous in this place. “Rianna Travers.”

“Well, Miss Travers, I’m sorry for not doing this in my office at the University as civilized people would do, but I was in an emergency,” Doctor Campbell said taking the seat in front of her.

“It’s not trouble, ma’am,” Riah answers, reassuring. “But I would like to know what assistance you require; the announcement wasn’t exactly specific. It just said you were an anthropologist and that you needed an assistant.”

“Well,” Doctor Campbell starts, “I’m preparing a theory, a work, outside my doctorate. Something that has never been investigated or at least has been abandoned since the beginning of this century.  And I need someone I can trust, someone who can be with me at all hours while I do this without betraying me. I have my grandfather, of course, but he doesn’t support everything I believe and he won’t live forever either.

“I won’t lie to you, Miss Travers, this job might not do good to your reputation. A woman having a career like mine is scandal enough. But adding the fact that I am making an investigation about soulmate marks will probably be the nail that seals the coffin. People are not interested in the person whose name is inscribed on their wrists anymore. They think that it’s all superstition. Wishful thinking. Magic.”

Riah tries to not chuckle at that, she refrains herself to tell this woman that in the future, her investigations would finally allow humans to discover that reincarnation is real. That somehow the universe is allowed to have a little magic, a few miracles.

And it seems that, even though Riah has just taken this job to hide and learn about these theories, she will be part of the story. After all, strange young assistants that pop out of nowhere don’t make it to the history books.

“I can assure you, Doctor,” Riah says with a smile, “that my experience has prepared me to believe in magic if necessary.”

 

* * *

 

Riah is not two years in her second body when she asks what the mark on her wrist means.

She has never thought about it before, it was just a mark, but Madame Kovarian tells her to learn different languages in case that she gets stuck without her vortex manipulator and suddenly she finds herself tracing the six letters in her skin.

Finally, she asks her caretaker what it is.

“It’s a soulmate mark,” the woman replies without even looking at the girl and continues with her dinner. They always eat alone and the only people that Riah sees entering and leaving the building are her trainers and professors.

“What’s a soulmate?” the girl carefully asks again.

“It’s someone that has a link to you across your entire life and regenerations. Or after your deaths, if you are of human kind.”

“And what does mine means?”

“Yours is a clerical error, Riah, there is nobody named _Doctor_ and you will not deviate from your mission trying to follow someone who is obviously not going to have you. What is your purpose?”

“Destroy the Daleks and bring peace to Gallifrey and the universe,” the girl recites obediently.

“Good. Remember that and stop having stupid little fantasies. Finish your supper.” Riah takes a sharp breath at the harsh words, but looks at the older Time Lady with intention in her brown golden eyes.

“Do _you_ have a soulmate, Madame?”

That earns her a slap.

 

* * *

 

“You don’t have to help me with the dinner, Miss Travers,” Doctor Campbell protests as Riah starts cutting the onions. “You're our guest after all.”

“I’m your employee, Ma’am, and please call me Rianna.”

“Only if you call me Susan,” the older woman says, smiling. “I’m still not used to being called Doctor, to be honest. The doctor in the family was always Grandfather.”

And like called, an old voice gruff from the other side of the house. “Is that you, Susan?”

“We are in the kitchen, Grandfather!”

“We? It’s Barbara here— Oh, good evening, young lady.” An old man dressed in a suit enters the kitchen and doffs his hat.

“Grandfather, this is Miss Rianna Travers, my new assistant. Rianna, this my grandfather.”

“Doctor Ignatius Foreman,” the man says with a sort of grandeur for the title that opposed his granddaughter’s humility. Riah shook his hand, putting on her best courteous smile, but when his fingers brush her hand she feels an electric current through her skin. The old man seems to feel the same because his hazel eyes bore into hers with curiosity.

“Do I know you, girl?”

Riah thinks that she would laugh if she could.  This human is long dead in her time stream and is technically younger than her, but there he is, asking her if he knows her like she is just some human girl. At least she knows that the TARDIS did well in letting her familiarize herself with the planet first.

“I doubt it, sir, I have lived in Southampton all my life,” the rehearsed lie comes easily. Yes, just Rianna Travers, a poor English student. Not a Time Lady, not a person from out of their planet.

Susan shows her to her room and, once alone, she calls her mother back and the TARDIS appears, faithful as always… camouflaged as her new wardrobe. Riah laughs hard this time, remembering one of the books that she had to read before coming out to this city. She moves the wardrobe inside the TARDIS silently thanking her trustful new employer for allowing her a wardrobe with a key so she will not need excuses for no one touching the TARDIS.

Once inside the TARDIS, Riah looks at her reflection in the console room. She is chronologically one hundred and fifty, but she doesn’t look older than nineteen and that is only because she has put a lot of dedication into styling her clothes and hair to look older. She can’t risk being treated like a child in a place like this and even less in this era. She knows that women have far more opportunities here than, she dares think, the Victorian era, but is still 20th century Earth and the TARDIS insists she has to be careful.

She hears a knock on the door. “Rianna, are you all right? Dinner is ready.”

“In a minute!” Riah tries to keep her voice familiar, so she doesn’t sound robotic or rehearsed, it still feels strange just… talking to people that are not part of a mission.

 _Aren’t they?_ Kovarian’s voice retorts in her mind. _Are they not a part of the cover you use to protect yourself?_

Riah takes a deep breath, stepping out of the TARDIS and caressing the now wooden door tenderly. She is the only one she can trust, and in other times, the girl would have found it pathetic, but now it’s comforting because at least she has _something_ ; even if that is the sentient ship where she was born.

The dinner passes by smoothly, with Doctor Foreman asking polite random questions about Susan’s investigation and name dropping some people. Riah looks at them, fascinated. It’s nothing like home. Nothing, even after her ‘siblings’ came, at least, not like this. She and Kovarian ate alone and barely spoke about anything but mission reports or reproaches about some failure. Seeing these people just enjoying each other’s company is something that she ironically can call alien.

“So, Miss Travers, Susan tells me that this is your first time in London.”

“It is, sir.”

“Your family is still in Southampton, I suppose.”

“I have no family,” Riah recites the story that the TARDIS invented for her. Not waiting for the hosts' sad reactions. “My parents died when I was six. My… aunt paid for my education and send me to a boarding school where I lived most of my infancy. When she died, I came here.”

“I’m sorry, Rianna,” Susan says but the Time Lady shakes her head.

“This boarding school, Miss Travers,” Doctor Foreman continues rudely, his eyes examining her,” what did it prepare you for?”

_Killing Daleks_

“Mostly languages and sometimes art, sir, but literature was forte.” _Rebels and peasants were fine too, or anyone who would oppose the President._

“Hmm, was it a thorough education?”

Riah tries hard to not scoff. “Most thorough.”

 

* * *

 

 

Madame says one day that she will take Riah to view an execution to celebrate her turning one century.

Years ago, that news would cause Riah a reaction, but now she just stares blankly to her caretaker’s smug smile and asks when it is and what’s the crime.

“Well, illegal breeders, of course,” Madame Kovarian’s smile widens at noticing Riah’s tensing this time. “A plague of them, truly. It seems that your parents inspired some people to commit hideous and primitive crimes. Eleven little abominations”

Riah takes a moment to calm her breathing. “What will they do with the children?” She knows there is no hope for the parents.

Madame Kovarian just smiles and holds River by the chin while her smile goes bigger.

“Oh, those are the best news of all, my girl, I have managed to convince the President that these little demons can be as obedient and useful as you. So, you will have a big bunch of brothers and sisters now. Isn’t this the best of the birthdays?” Her voice goes sickeningly sweet and Riah holds nausea growing in her stomach.

_They’d be better off dead._

“The best,” she replies.

 

* * *

 

 

After two months, Riah has to admit that she is truly interested in Susan’s investigation. Susan’s commitment to her theory and the way that she perseveres with her interviews and investigations is contagious. Riah never asked about her own soulmate mark since she was a child but the kindness of the anthropologist makes her trust her enough to show her peculiar mark.

“Hmm, maybe your soulmate is a doctor?” Susan says smiling and Riah scoffs at her.

“It could be anyone and no one,” the young woman shrugs, “I never really thought about it. But my— my aunt said it didn’t make sense because it wasn’t a name. So, I probably just don’t have one.”

“Nonsense, dear, of course, this is rare, but not impossible. Grandfather has one, after all.”

“He has one?” Riah repeats. “One what?” That electric pulse when they first met. No, it’s not possible.

“Well, a soulmate mark that only says ‘Professor’. He doesn’t have a name or anything, though, I have never asked him if he tried to find that person. Probably not, for the same reason that you didn’t,” Susan rests her chin on her fists. “He also has a number in his right wrist.”

“A number?”

“Yes, a number one.  That mark, I think it may mean that this, our lives, might be not a one-time thing,” her tune grows intense. “It has to be, Rianna, something more than just marks. Why would be any god or the universe allows us to connect with another soul among billions if it’s just one time? Sometimes I think that people are scared to know.”

“Or maybe they are scared of not being wanted,” Riah says. “It’s not like it’s something… Essential? Is it? There are many people that haven’t met their soulmates.”

“They should,” Susan says bluntly and Riah arches an eyebrow.

“Did you meet yours already?”

“What is the address for the next interview?” the anthropologist says to make clear that she won’t answer that question. Riah doesn’t press her, though her curiosity remains. Why would Susan be so reluctant to answer if her investigation is to see how the concept and existence of soulmates affect the other humans?

She can look at the historical records in the TARDIS, she is sure that Susan is one of those people that have their soulmate name registered by the government because of the hope to find the other one. But instead, she asks Doctor Foreman about it, carefully, because even with the trust that has formed between her and the two scientists, the Time Lady doesn’t want to ruin all the progress she has made.

“You didn’t see it?” he asks one night that they are both sitting in the drawing room. They normally talk about astronomy, because that’s the old man favourite subject to talk without being _entirely_ rude or condescending.

“She always keeps her wrists covered, I was just curious… Since it’s her subject in the investigation.”

“I don’t know, child, I shouldn’t be the one talking about this,” Doctor Foreman mumbles.

“Was it her husband?” Riah says and shrugs when the old man looks at her surprised. “It wasn’t that hard to guess. I figured out she was a widow but not that he was her soulmate.”

“Susan doesn’t like to talk about it, she thinks that mentioning David and Alex will make people think that her investigation is just guided by blind emotion.”

“And you? Do you think she is?” Riah doesn’t ask him how Susan’s husband and child died, she instead studies the face of the old man searching for some patronizing gesture that sometimes appears while talking to her or to Susan. Instead of that, Doctor Foreman just shakes his head.

“She has always been very taken with the subject, since her grandmother was alive. She always had curiosity, especially about the number. I always thought that it was something special,” he scoffed. “But my Patience certainly wasn’t a professor.”

“What was she?” Riah asks, truly curious about the matter. Neither the doctor or Susan seemed very kin of talking about the rest of the family. Which sometimes is irony, given how she spits parts of her false life story freely every time they ask about her relatives.

“Hmm? She was a writer or wanted to be, at least, she loved to write stories in which she travelled in time to the past and visited her favorite historical figures,” Doctor Foreman rolls his eyes, affectionate at the memory. It’s one of the first times that she has seen him showing affection for anyone but Susan. Riah tries to repress the sudden wish to tell him that there is a time machine in her room but immediately scolds herself for thinking such a foolish idea. _What are you? Twenty?_ _Since when you would risk your position to impress a human that will be long dead by the time that his people even_ think _of how to even try to time travel?_ She hates how in moments like this her inner voice sounds like Kovarian.

Riah doubts that she can call Doctor Foreman a friend, she is too different from him and he is too… Young, in a way, as all the humans there, they are ghosts around her, all of them dead and alive at the same time. She hides among them, but even now, when she knows there is a kind of kinship between herself and the two doctors, she still can’t help the fact that she knows the date of Susan’s death, that it will be a moment she has to know before altering history.

She doesn’t understand it until years later, but she never looks up the year of Doctor Foreman’s demise.

 

* * *

 

The execution is simple, thank the stars and quick; and Riah watches it all with a stony face, a clenched fist hidden in the pocket of her new, bright red tunic.  She knows that the sole fact that Kovarian gave it to her is mockery, same reason why she makes her stand with the Time Lords as an example of what she can do with the child of rebels.

Twenty-two people stand in the gallows, a couple per child. Riah asks herself if her parents were in the same place long time ago, after deciding to have a child that they knew would be left alone.

All of them are quite dirty from what she can see. They surely hid in the Dead Lands until their need made it impossible to stay away from Arcadia… Or maybe, maybe there is another story. Maybe a spy went among them and pretended to be their friend, maybe their children grew ill, or maybe they thought that the law would truly change one day.

The President makes his usual _long_ speech about how the criminals have broken the law because only loom born can carry the legacy of Rassilon. _As if anyone with wits would want that,_ Riah thinks bitterly. At the end, they announce that even when the couples broke the law, the splendid Madame Kovarian would make the false children something useful for the glory of Gallifrey.

She looks at the people gathered before the firing squad.  Most of them are crying, others have dead expression their faces. When the soldiers start to raise their weapons, Riah looks to the children, all grouped on their knees to one side, just out of the line of fire. Some of them are crying too, others are too young to know what’s happening. But four of them catch her attention:

Two girls and boys in the group, the oldest ones must be between nine and twelve, the younger around six. One of the girls has a serious and intense face, as she is forcing herself to see what is happening, the other has furious expression and seems to be containing herself to not jump in front of the guns herself.

The boys are a different case, the oldest boy seems to be holding back tears, his face contorted. The other one has a calculating, almost interested face and his mouth was dangerously close to a smirk of satisfaction.

The expression on the eyes of that child scares Riah more than the sounds of the screams and shooting.

 

* * *

 

Riah enters in her room and inside the TARDIS slamming the door and running her fingers over hair. Stupid, how could she’d been so _stupid?_

Her mother sends her a psychic message of reassurance.

“Oh, but I am,” the girl replies out loud. “How could I be so careless? So blind? How could I not imagine that she would send one of them? How could I don’t think that they could find me? I have been so _stupid!_ ”

“No,” she murmurs. “No, I have to go. It’s not safe for anyone here. Not for me or for _them._ ”

The TARDIS gives a sound of protest.

“What else do you suggest?!” Riah spits but doesn’t receive any reply except one of the drawers of the console opening containing paper and a pen. If she weren’t so stressed at this moment, she probably would laugh over the anachronism of paper even existing in this ship. Instead, she sighs and takes the pen and paper. “Fine.”

She had been in Glasgow, as always accompanying Susan to interviews and investigations. This time they had got quite an interesting story about a woman who dreamed the same dreams as her soulmate. Susan was thrilled about the interview and while they were in a café, talking about it and preparing to go back to England, a waiter had given a paper to Riah, pointing out that a woman from two tables away asked him to deliver it.

The paper had a single word.

 _Rindle._   

“Rianna, are you all right?” Susan had asked her, but Riah could just breathe deeply and turn around to confront her message and she saw her: thin and with a big mass of blonde curls, a young woman smiled and raised her glass at her.

“I— I— I am sorry, Susan, just be a moment,” the Time Lady stormed out of her chair and went to speak to the woman who sent the message.

“How are you doing, big sister?” H-One said, almost sweetly. “We miss you at home.”

“What are you doing here?” Riah didn’t have the time for games. How had they found her? She was using a bio-damper and the TARDIS was almost shut down, she had her mental shields raised almost all the time; the only thing that remained was for her to make a bloody Chameleon Arch!

“Don’t get cross, Riah, I’m here to warn you,” H-One raised her hands in surrender.

“To warn me what? That Kovarian wants me dead, that the Time Lords sent you to kill me? I already know that, H-One.”

“Mother didn’t send me, Riah, she doesn’t even know I am here,” Riah scoffed, but her sister groaned and took a paper from the pocket of her jacket. “I’m here to warn you that the humans you are living with now are in danger and you must leave this time before it’s too late.”

“Why? Because you will kill them?”

“No, because Lake will.”

Riah’s face went pale at the name. “That’s not possible, I thought Kovarian deemed him too dangerous, that he wasn’t trustworthy to be left alone.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, you surpassed him with your little escape,” H-One deadpanned. “He is here, Riah, he knows where you live, he knows when and where the old man and the woman go and he will not rest until— “

“Until what? I will not go back to Gallifrey.”

“You say that now,” H-One said, looking at her with pity, “they know you have a heart Riah, they won’t rest until you confront them and at that moment you won’t be able to escape.”

“They? Not you?” Riah buried her hazel eyes on her sister’s blue gaze. “Why the sudden sisterly affection? Didn’t you and Brooke fight over Kovarian’s affections? What happened that now you are so willful about disobeying her?”

“I can’t tell you details, but… Let’s say I am doing it for Rindle,” Riah took a deep breath and clenched her jaw at the name. “And for you.”

“Why should I believe this? Who is the mysterious person that suddenly has compassion for me?”

H-One smiled again, pressing the paper in her hands, “You will know. Good luck, sister.”

After that, H-One disappeared just as she had arrived. Riah stood many days, looking at the envelope that her sister gave her. First, she wanted to burn it.  The bloody thing said: _Don’t open it until the year 2390 A.C_. What kind of rubbish was that? Probably H-One was just playing with her and wanted to force her to move again so Kovarian could track her. Riah left the envelope in a drawer with that thought, disposed to follow with her life. She had years.  She didn’t have to go yet.

Until she saw him.

She was coming out from one of Susan’s first lectures in the university.  Just one-quarter of the people in the room had seemed interested in her talk.  The rest either rolled their eyes and muttered things like ‘women’s sentimentalities’ or just plain ignored how Susan had explained how the discovery of soulmates became fact and not something that could affect a person’s life.

He was between some of the students when everyone started to come out and his eyes caught Riah’s. He was different, younger with his hair darker and spikier, but his eyes were the same. Unmistakable even when they were a different colour, with that chilling vibe that almost made her trip. Lake returned her gaze and smiled.

Riah held back panic until she was safe in the TARDIS. H-One had been right, he knew where she lived and where her friend worked. She had to leave.

She closes her eyes as she finishes the letter.

 

_Dear Susan:_

_When you read this, I will be travelling.  An urgent matter has happened with a family member that I thought lost, and I must go to help him. I am sorry that I can’t give more explanation._

_I just want to tell you don’t give up, your work will change the world, I am sure of that._

_Please don’t look for me.  If anything happens, I will contact you. Give my love to your grandfather._

_Yours,_

_Rianna._

She is about to put the letter in the bedroom when she remembers the other letter H-One had given to her. Riah takes a look at the unrecognizable handwriting and puts it in the scan.

“Who wrote this?” she whispers and the screen says only one name:

_River Song._

“What? Who is River Song?” She read the date that she is supposed to open the letter again and types it in the console.

The Time Lady steps out of the TARDIS, looking at the place that has been her home for more than a year. She places her letter to Susan in the bed and closes the door of her TARDIS, blinking the tears away.

“Well,” Riah claps her hands and sniffs, she never cries and she is not going to start now. “What do we have now?” The TARDIS made a sound in reply. Kovarian is sending her siblings to chase her, not caring how unstable they can be or how many rules they are breaking. Riah’s escape certainly bruised her ego.

She can’t stay in the vortex because they would track her, but neither can she stay here or in any place long enough to be noticed. All she has is one number and a strange name. It’s all right, she has started over with less.

“So, the chase begins,” she says and pulls the ladder down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Hey, guys! Thank you for your comments. This chapter was a wild ride to introduce our now human Doctor. Every incarnation of the Doctor is going to be a separated person in a different era... Kind of like in canon, in case that that was not clear, but still going for the tradition, River is not gonna meet all of them in order. Neither all the relationships are going to be romantic because Big Finish has not touched some of them and because some are difficult for me to write.
> 
> * [The Proto Time-Lords](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Proto-Time_Lord) are River's clones/siblings showed during the third series of _The Diary of River Song_. Quite a bunch they are. They are going to be a big part of this story even if they are not clones here. I totally recommend you to listen to the audios, they are marvellous.
> 
> I hope you liked and please leave a comment here or send any question you might have to my blog. Cheers!


	3. The Codebreaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t move, waiting for another sound.
> 
> Steps again, Riah walks around the house, concentrating and following the sounds, going through the same way that the steps indicate.
> 
> And then she hears an electric zap, a sounds that she recognizes instantly.
> 
> Vortex manipulator.
> 
>  
> 
> _They were here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! But this chapter was hella difficult and quite long, so I wanted to be sure that my beta got all my grammar horrors. 
> 
> River's third face is the same actress that played Mels in the series: Nina Toussaint-White. Though her personality is nothing like Mels here.  
>  
> 
> **Music for this chapter:**
> 
> Scene 6: [_Louisa's birthmark_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm-KsZe5r1E) and [_Temple of Sacrifice_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0AjmDTBJqg) from _Cloud Atlas_
> 
> Scenes 7 and 8: [_The Escape_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qywBOr93XME) same album than below.

 

“Did you know that it was him that time?” The Moment asks.

“No, neither the second time,” the Professor smiled sadly. “It was better for them, they lived a full life without me putting them in danger.”

“But you kept contact with them,” the Moment arched an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah, I did, but it was centuries after I left.”

“For you.”

“Of course that for me, they don’t live that long.”

“And what did you do during those centuries?” The Moment asks and the Time Lady gives her glare.

“You know what I did.”

“You died,” there is a marked sadness in her fake Scottish voice.

“And lived,” the Professor says with pride, “more than many of the people on this wrenched planet can say.”

* * *

 

 

The sound of someone of the door opening wakes her up.

She has been in this cell for a month or so; with the door opening only for a service person to bring the food. This time, when it opens, a man is thrown inside and falls on his knees. He is dressed with a comically anachronistic… Cricket uniform? A small smile forms in the woman’s lips as she looks at the stranger get up and give a little jump of surprise when he sees her.

“Oh… Hello.”

“Hello,” the Time Lady says showing her teeth in a shark-like smile. Long, curly brown hair marking her beautiful face. “Who are you, handsome?”

The man in the cricket suit blinks at her. “I—I am Andrew. Andrew Daniels, time agent. And you are, miss?” He offers his hand to her with a trustful smile. Too trustful. Stars, this one in in a big problem, isn’t he?

“I’m Nina and… Why did they get you?” It’s funny to see a supposed time agent so quickly captured and without backup.  She gets to the conclusion that this one mustn’t be very good.

“I was in an operation to capture a wanted criminal and… It appears it might be a confusion, but the Time Lord authorities arrested me. I’m sure my superiors will get to the bottom of this,” he laughs again, nervous.

“A dangerous criminal?” the woman asks with an almost sardonic tune.

“A hacker, thief and spy who calls themselves The Codebreaker,” the time agent says frowning, apparently he has done this many times. “They have hacked companies’ money, put their noses in fixed events and downright being a pain in the arse for both Time Lords and other species alike. My department lost their patience and I was assigned to find them.”

“Don’t the Time Lords hate when someone else gets their nose in their business?”

“Well, miss, I’m afraid that their business has already caused quite a lot of chaos—Oh!” the man almost falls when the floor underneath them moves. The woman takes a deep breath. They are taking off.

“I suggest you to sit down, Mr. Daniels, it will be a long journey,” she says and Daniels can’t help but sigh and sit on the floor. The journey to Gallifrey will certainly be long.

They keep silence for some minutes and Nina hears the engines, trying to hear past them and focus to hear if someone is there, watching them. Did they put this human with her for some reason? Some sick test? Don’t they know that she already knows _all_ of them?

Mr. Daniels is looking around the cell, probably realizing that there is no way out but the door, as she did the first weeks. Then he looks at her, up and down in the corner where Nina is clutched. She doesn’t need any kind of telepathy to know what his thoughts are: she looks young. Too young to be there, surely, taken away by the Time Lords.

The real question that passes for her mind is how he doesn’t realize that she is one of them.

“Why are you here, miss?” he asks instead, surprising her. He really seems to think that Nina is just a girl, so she smiles, the gesture is everything but truthful.

“Oh, I have been a bad girl.”

* * *

 

 

Riah is sure that she will never forget the first time she died, even if she was child, that memory is implanted in her brain: the heat, the rage, the pain, the bitterness. She will never be free of the moment that she realized that her lives, even if they were many, were completely expendable.

The second time is a blur in her mind and she can never fully recall it.

She wakes up in the floor of the console room, her head pounding, but when she takes a hand to her head Riah sees that the skin is darker.

She also realizes that half of the place is on fire.

“Oh, for the love of— What happened?” She gets up and the TARDIS makes a sound that could be translated as a scold. “Alright! Alright, we are landing, just calm down!” Her voice feels different, the accent, the tune, Riah wonders how her new face looks like.

The Time Lady has to move to another room while the TARDIS repairs the console room. And as any mother feeling when her child is tired, the TARDIS provides her of a bedroom, is not the one she normally uses, maybe the time machine also feels the change.

Riah gets rid of her soaked t-shirt and notices that she is a little taller now, when she finally gets to the bathroom, a strange face glances her back in the mirror. The skin darker, prettier. Older, but not more than five years than her last, the hair an impossible mass of dark, tight curls by the shoulders. She smiles; not bad really, it could have been worse.

She sleeps, probably for a day or two, more than she would need for two months, but regeneration is always messy and apparently for her, different, because the first time she experienced it, it had resulted in a fit of energy. Now she just wants to sleep and think about where to go next.

Riah doesn’t want to admit that her siblings took her by surprise, but not to would be a lie. She had grown too comfortable in that colony, staying more than her accustomed single year. She had even bought a house so the TARDIS would stay hidden and make them harder to track, but at the end, a Time Lady travelling alone was still a neon light in the universe.

Creek was the first to find her, entering her building and talking to the landlady about her missing sister. Riah listened to everything from the other side of the room and then jumped out the window to avoid them. After that she was determined to keep them away from the humans.  The more noise her siblings made, the more the people around her started to spread rumors; and that made it more difficult for her to find a new place to hide.

She changes and returns to the console room. The place is brand new and beautiful, looking like a neo-Victorian manor and Riah smiles, it appears that her mother already has an idea of when they are going.

“You are not going to take me to River Song, are you?” she says, remembering the first time she tried to go to the date that was in the old letter that H-One had given her. The TARDIS stubbornly stuck herself in the 34th century for two decades, leaving her with her doubt until the subject was forgotten. But now the date is again on the console, taunting her and Riah hopes it’s not some joke or revenge for ruining the room with her regeneration.

“Why now?” she asks and the TARDIS just makes the coordinates in the console blink, one year away from the date in the letter, she guesses she will find out. “Alright, let’s go then.”

An abandoned house almost outside London serves as shelter the first week and after a lot of thinking, the Time Lady decided to put a perception filter in it and fuse it with the Chameleon Circuit of the TARDIS. Humans pass by and, seeing the old house, scratched their heads as if they just remembered that it was there and promptly forgot it as soon as it was out of sight.

She gets a job quickly with the help of fake papers created by the time machine. Her new name is Renata Green, a young orphan that got possession of her distant aunt’s old house. She uses a little psychic paper, a little subtle telepathic persuasion to get her way past curious eyes and authorities. Everything goes smoothly. _One year,_ she tells herself, _only one year and then you move to the next._

The job is in a bookshop, which is not much, but is neither extravagant nor big enough to her siblings to notice her. The attendant of the shop is a nice young woman named Clara Oswald. Someone that Riah can only describe as a bossy and energetic little thing.

“I thought that people didn’t buy books anymore,” she comments on her first day as Clara is showing her the different sections and shelves.

“Well, it’s true that the production fell down when people _surprisingly_ realized that we had to keep the trees to cover us from the solar flares. Catch!” the girl says, climbing the stairs and throwing one of the books to Riah, she catches it without blinking. “Wow, you have good reflexes. Our books are mostly made of recycled material, Miss Green.”

“Please call me Renata.  So this shop has always been yours?”

“It has belonged to my family since my grandmother was a child.  My great-grandfather started it when he retired from his job as a publisher. My grandmother and parents cared for it after that, and now that gran is in a retirement home, it’s my job in between the hours at college.”

“What about your parents?”

“They died during the epidemic drop when I was a teenager.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry.”  There is a flash of pain in Clara’s eyes but she smiles. “You will open the shop in the morning and will come to help in the evenings.”

“What are you studying?” Riah follows her to the second floor.

“Well, it sounds cliché but I’m going to be an English teacher,” the human girl replies. “But I want to write, one day. My mum… She was a writer. Books, stories, that always has made me feel connected to her.”

Riah smiles at Clara, she smiles and envies her, but in part, she likes to think that she feels the same when she is in the TARDIS.

The second day of work, a woman with a young child enters in the shop and asks for children’s books. Riah complies, smiling and lowering herself to the little boy’s height asking him what stories he likes.  She barely looks at the girl, but she seems to be either his sister or a nanny.

Clara arrives from college just a few minutes after and she merrily greets the child. “How are you, Luke? How are your parents?”

“Mum said that I could by a book with Gina,” the boy says, he seems to be at least four years old and has big blue eyes.

“Well, here Renata would find something for you I am sure,” Clara says and later in the evening when Riah asks where she knew them she replies that she used to be the child’s babysitter.

“The new one doesn’t seem to match you,” the Time Lady says distracted. “Didn’t you notice something… Odd in her?”

“Gina? Well, I don’t know her too much, she seems like a reserved girl. Luke’s parents always try to hire discreet people.”

“Why?”

“Well, his mother is Sarah Jane Smith for starters,” Riah blinks at Clara, not getting the name. “Seriously? You don’t know who she is? She is a journalist. She practically smacked the government about preventing the solar flares when it was obvious that the ships were not going to come back. Her husband is one of my teachers, also called Smith, he makes a lot of jokes about that.”

Riah notices her bitterness when talking about the ships, it seems to be something common about the humans of this century, the last ship has been long gone for more than thirty years and the global warming is worse than ever. Solar flares that make impossible to be outside and winters that every year kill more and more people; is not surprising that the inhabitants of the planet are starting to feel let down by the people that went away.

“So, this Gina girl started to care for the child once you left?”

“I think so, why are you so interested in her?”

“I just… felt something strange.” Or rather better that she hadn’t felt anything, it was like something drew her away from that woman.

“Like what?”

Something like… No, it wasn’t possible, not yet in this era.

“Nothing, don’t mind me,” the dark-skinned woman shakes her head. They can’t have find her; it has been barely two months.

 _One year_ , she tells herself, _just one year._

* * *

 

 

_Soulmates can be friends or enemies or lovers, there is no limit for how the universe would tie one to another being. But how do we identify them? Is this connection capable of breaking more than one boundary? Time? Space? Death? This is what I’m talking in this book, where I have compiled different interviews, testimonies and facts around the matter._

“Are you reading _A String Across Time_?” Clara asks her and Riah puts down the book, Susan’s book. She had been so happy when she had found it. A confirmation that her old friend had lived safely.

“Have you read it?” She asks the girl and Clara nods taking another sip of her drink. They are in a park, in one of the few days in summer where is safe to go outside.

“I read it once, my mother was fascinated with the subject, though that book is ancient, there are more advanced ones, you know?”

“Yes, but without her, none would think about registering their soul-marks or believe that there is more beyond one single life,” Riah objects, feeling the sudden need of defending her friend’s work. “Besides, you don’t stop studying ancient texts because they are old.”

“Good point,” Clara shrugs her shoulders. “Do you have one?”

“A what?”

“A soul-mark, silly.”

“Yes but,” Riah takes out the band that covers her wrist,” it doesn’t make much sense.”

“So, they are a doctor? Or the name is Doctor?”

“Who calls themselves ‘Doctor’?”

“Oh, you will be surprised of the names that people name their kids after, look at mine,” Clara extends her arm across the table and Riah read the name _Basil Frazier_ in her skin.

“Well,” she says, trying to not laugh,” it’s still a name, not a title. Did you ever try to find him?”

“We talk, actually,” Clara says and blushes. “Well, we write to each other, actually, proper letters, is like a private joke.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yeah, well, he is a history professor in Glasgow,” the girl licks her lips and shrugs,” he was a little rude at first but then it was quite nice. He is older than me, a lot older, and sweet, when he wants and very… Scottish, I guess.”[2]

“You like him,” Riah laughs at her friend’s big eyes and blushed face. “Have you ever think about visiting him?”

“What, to Scotland?” Clara asks and the Time Lady shrugs. “And what I would tell him? ‘Hello, Basil, I am that English girl who is twenty years your junior and happens to be your soulmate. How about a date?’ It’s ridiculous.”

“I never said that you should ask him out, Oswin,” Riah says not able to contain the laugh at the human girl’ red face.

“I should have never told you my second name,” Clara covers her face with her hands.

“It’s the name of the shop, the question was going to come up whatever you wanted or not,” Riah says sipping her own drink. “And nevertheless, I let you call me Nina, even when I don’t know where it came from.”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s a cute nickname—” the sudden sound of a shot and screams interrupts the conversation. _It is a shot,_ Riah thinks, not mistaken. She jumps from the bench and runs in the direction where the people are screaming. And then like a flash of light, she passes by her side.  

“Stop her!” Someone screams and everything seems to happen in slow motion, the young woman that just passed by her side runs away with a child in her arms. Riah recognizes her and by instinct, she starts running after her.

It doesn’t take Riah too much to catch her, even if she is not even pretending to run at human speed. She corners her in a passageway, her sister looks exactly the same that the last time she saw her: red curly hair to the jaw, slender figure, mad eyes and a child crying in her arms.

“Hello, sister,” she smiles while the little boy struggles in her arms. Riah recognizes the boy, Luke Smith.

“What are you doing, Wadi?” Riah doesn’t have time for mind games, this is not like H-One’s cryptic messages or Creek and Stream’s mindless hunt. She knows what Wadi is, to whom she is loyal.[1]

“What’s wrong, Riah? Are you the only that can have a pet?”

“This isn’t funny, he is only a child, whatever Kovarian wants— “

“Oh, Mother doesn’t have anything to do with this, we just want our big sister back but it seems that she prefers the company of rats,” Wadi passes her long nails through the boy’s hair. “Tsk, such disappointing tastes you have now, Riah.”

“I’m not for your games, Wadi, what do you want?”

“Oh, just to tell you a message from our dear brother,” Wadi lets the boy in the floor and he runs to Riah, holding her legs.  “Be careful with your little humans, one of them might be too important.” The two Gallifreyans turn around when they hear a woman screaming the boy’s name. “Farewell, sister.”

Before she can react, the click of a vortex manipulator sounds and Wadi disappears in a snap.

Riah takes a moment to notice the little boy sobbing in her kneels and bends down putting her hands in Luke’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay, hmm? She is gone now. You are safe.”

“Luke!” A woman came running to them and the boy freed himself from Riah’s arms to her. “Oh, God, what were you thinking? I told you to not go with strangers!”

“She had magic, Mummy, she disappeared!” the child says pointing at the place where Wadi had stood.

“What are you talking about?” the woman, Sarah Jane, she remembers, looks at Riah. “Thank you for helping my son. I think I saw you before…”

“Probably in Oswin’s Books,” Riah says quickly offering her hand. “I’m Renata.”

“Is he alright?” a tall man came running behind Sarah Jane, Riah had forgotten his name but she knew that he was the boy’s father and she had seen it talking to Clara many times in the shop.

“Thanks to this brave girl, it seems he is,” Sarah Jane smiled to Riah.

Luke tells his parents that the redhead girl had told him that Gina wanted to talk to him, took his hand and then pulled a gun when he tried to run away. Riah frowns at the story and sees the Smiths saying that they should have ‘denounced that girl when she started to act strange’.

“Strange?” she asks, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bother but I saw that girl some months ago in the shop.”

“We dismissed her three weeks ago,” Sarah Jane says,” started to bring people to our house and to scare Luke with stories.”

Stories? Could that Gina be Wadi? That could explain why Riah had that reaction at seeing her the first time. A disguise and perception filter, probably. Oh, stars, she had been so _slow._

“Miss Green?” Mr. Smith calls her. “Would you allow us to invite you to dinner as thanks for helping our boy?”

“George, I don’t think that she— “

“I would love to,” Riah says, too distracted with what her sister said to care about what she agreed to. She slaps herself later when she goes back to the TARDIS to change.

What had Wadi meant with too important? None of the humans that had been in the colonies and cities where she lived were exactly crucial to history. She had been careful after Susan. The who…?

“Search the name Luke Smith, parents Sarah Jane and George Smith, late 24th century and earlier 25th century, Earth” the TARDIS shows him a man with curly hair and big blue eyes in an article that talks about the last pioneer to the construction of spaceships out of Earth during the last years of the human race in their planet. “Shit,” she murmurs.

Alright, the kid is certainly important, but what has that to be with her? Kovarian won’t let them break the codes of the Time Lords, even if that meant to bring her back surely?

A horse-like laugh escaped from her lips at the thought, as if Kovarian cared about the consequences to anything but her pride.

“This is not my business,” she says out loud. “These humans are not my business, I can’t save them from their own planet and I can’t surely be around trying to— “

 _But they are here because of you,_ the TARDIS’ thought passes through her mind.

“That’s not my fault! I have done everything to avoid them. What does it matter what they do to a kid?”

The TARDIS’ telepathic flare is a buzzing in her head.  

“Alright! Alright! But just till the end of the year, do you understand? Not a single day more.”

During the dinner, she asks the Smiths if they need a new babysitter.

* * *

 

 

“Your house is crazy, Nina.” The Time lady smiles as the girl enters the TARDIS, the shape the time machine had chosen was a large, old house, so the bigger on the inside looks were justified and Riah doesn’t have to run to it again if she hides it. After all, no better hiding than in plain sight. “You never invited me here before. It looks smaller on the outside.”

Riah turns around at her friend with arched brow but then laughs, Clara really knows how to light her humour no matter what she says.

“Well, houses are big when you live alone, it will be a second,” Riah says and starts climbing the stairs of the fake living room. Of course, all that Clara sees is a living room, maybe a little old fashioned for the 24th century but humans are always nostalgic.

Riah goes to her bedroom to get the money she was looking for and another coat. It’s freezing even for her. 24th century, two years have passed but the humans are half a century from leaving their now dying planet.

Clara is sitting in one of the sofas, togged in her overcoat which makes her look comically small.

“I’m ready, are you sure you don’t want to go to the doctor, Clara?” Riah asks looking at the young human red face. “This weather hasn’t been kind to you.”

“It isn’t kind with anyone who has lungs,” Clara says and then sniffs in her handkerchief. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Oh, I am an alien from outer space so my skin is colder than yours,” Riah says merrily as she helps the little brunette up.

“Ha, ha, ha, very funny.”

She gets Clara to her apartment and the girl groans and throws her arms around the Time Lady.

“Ugh, I don’t want to go there, it’s freezing, can’t we just go for a drink?”

“I’m sorry, Oswin, I can’t, you know I have to look after Luke today,” Riah says as she untangles Clara’s arms from her, the human gives her a frown for using her second name.

“I don’t know how you can be so good with kids.”

“It’s only one kid, Clara. You have thirty.”

“I’m a teacher, that doesn’t count.”

“Go to bed, you won’t be good to go to Glasgow if you don’t rest and your boyfriend will have my head,” Riah says and takes the girl face, pressing a kiss on her forehead.

“Tomorrow I stay in your house!” Clara says as she disappears behind the building’s front door. Riah chuckles and shakes her head.

While she walks she tells herself that this happiness is still something limited. She has exceeded her limit and she knows it. More than two years in one place, in one time, in one era. It’s too much. But she can’t help longing for the lightness that she feels in this place, in this life, in this body. Her previous self was a girl torn apart by sorrow and the horrors of Gallifrey, of everything that been taken back there would mean, that still had Kovarian as her conscience, preventing her from forming any bond after leaving Susan and Doctor Foreman.  

Now she feels strangely light and free, she doesn’t know if it’s just this body or just these humans around her, with all their… warmth. Maybe it is, or maybe she just now understanding what it is to be free.

She arrives the Smith’s house with a smile in her face, little Luke’s voice coming from the other side of the door as soon as she touches the doorbell.

“Daddy, Daddy, it’s Nina! Open the door, it’s Nina!”

“Alright, alright but let me pass,” Mr. Smith says and when the door opens, two little arms close around her legs. “Good evening, Renata.”

“Good evening, Mr. Smith,” Riah smiles at the teacher and takes the boy in her arms. “And how are you, bug? Have you been good?”

“Mummy says you will stay tonight,” the child asks her. “Will you Nina?”

“Yes, bug, it will be just both of us tonight, your mummy and daddy are going to travel so we are just us,” Luke squeals and gets off of her arms, Riah smiles at her teacher.

“You look smart, sir.”

“Well, I hope so, Sarah Jane will kill me if I don’t look presentable for her big night,” Mr. Smith gives her his signature Cheshire smile. “We will repay you for this, for sure, if you had plans for tonight.”

“Oh, just watching movies with a Clara, but she is with a cold so…”

“Ah, the good Miss Oswald, still an Austen lover?”

“You will never guess what movies she wanted to watch tonight,” Riah jokes but they are interrupted by Luke calling her, he comes holding his mother’s hand. Sarah Jane Smith is resplendent in her evening gown, albeit a little naked for the current weather; the reporter seems to notice that when she sees how many layers the nanny is wearing and her eyes wild.

“You were right, George, I should wear a pantsuit,” she barely blinks when Riah kisses her cheek but the Time Lady hears Mr. Smith groan.

“We are going late, I will give you my scarf, c’mon.”

“Well, that thing certainly will cover you up,” Riah snorts.

“Alright, alright, thank you for coming, Renata, we left you sheets and covers in the guest room and you have our numbers just in case… “

“Sarah, I’m sure Renata knows, she has been working here for two years, the taxi is waiting for us.”

“Okay, Okay,” Sarah Jane says quickly while lifting her son up and kissing his face multiple times. “Goodbye, sweetheart. Be good with Renata, okay?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Everything Is going to be fine, right bug? You have nothing to worry about, Sarah Jane, congratulations.”

“Everything settled?” Mr. Smith says and the taxi outside starts playing the hooter again. Luke gets free from Sarah Jane’s hold and jumps onto his father’s arms. “See you tomorrow, little man. Sarah.”

They say goodbye to the Smiths from the window and Riah gets rid of her many layers of clothes and starts the night with her little pupil.

Luke is a manageable child, even if his parents are normally working, he is not clingy or spoiled and Riah is thankful for it. If it had been the contrary she couldn’t have spent those first months of endless watch in case of her sister showing up again. First unsure, since the only children she had ever encountered were her siblings, she often asks herself how human children can be so different to Gallifreyans.

Or maybe it’s just that Luke has two loving parents.

Later at night, she is reading Luke a bedtime story and the boy asks if his parents are going to be fine because of the snow.

“They will be in a hotel, bug, and it will not snow forever, I’m sure that tomorrow it will be better.”

“In the telly, they say that we won’t be able to live here anymore,” the little boy says. “Why is that, Nina? Now is cold and in summer we can’t get out when there are solar flares.”

Riah sighs and rests her head in the pillow letting the child rest his head against her chest.

“Planets die, Luke, everything dies, someday. Earth is getting old, that’s old, it’s not stable to people to live in it. That’s why there is people out there, in space, looking for a new home.” The boy looks at her with big clear eyes and Riah smiles softly. There could happen many things from here to the last ship of Earth in a few decades, but she wants to have the certainty that this little family will survive. She knows how the things go, she is not a superhero and neither can’t change things that are inevitable, but the Time Lady wants to allow herself to a little hope from time to time.

“But what if they don’t come back?”

“They will and you will travel the stars,” she bops the little boy’s nose. “Like the princess in the red desert, remember?”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Riah spends the night reading in bed, waiting for her normally short sleep to kick in, when it does, a sound wakes her up after a few minutes. Steps sounds.

There is someone in the house.

Riah gets up, passing through Luke’s bedroom to check in and walks to the kitchen, taking a knife from the drawers. It can be just a thief, but she doubts that even the most desperate human can think of going out in the night with this kind of weather.

She doesn’t move, waiting for another sound.

Steps again, Riah walks around the house, concentrating and following the sounds, going through the same way that the steps indicate.

And then she hears an electric zap, a sounds that she recognizes instantly.

Vortex manipulator.

_They were here._

* * *

 

The Smiths come back in afternoon, the backyard of the house and all the street is covered in white. It’s still snowing.

“Renata, you don’t have to go now, you can wait until the snow passes,” Sarah Jane offers, ”we can have some tea.”

“I’d love too, Sarah, but I promised myself that I will check up on Clara, last night she wasn’t feeling well and she is too stubborn to call her nan about it.”

“Oh, well at least let me take you to her house,” the woman offers and Riah can’t do anything but agree, she doesn’t want to raise suspicion of what happened last night. She doesn’t even know if it was really Wadi or one of the others. But she is sure that there was someone with a vortex manipulator.

“Were you two alright, last night?” Sarah Jane asks her when they are already in the car.” You seem distracted today. “

“I’m fine,” the Time Lady says a little too quickly, “it’s just… Couldn’t sleep because of the storm, that’s all, it worried me that we would be snowed in when you came back.”

“Well, this weather could get anyone without hope,” the journalist says with a grim expression. “I am really just counting the days since the last time we received messages from out there. My friend Jo was on one of the ships, I can’t simply believe that they abandoned us here to freeze or burn.”

“They didn’t,” Riah says firmly, “they will come back.”

Everything that happens in the moment that she gets off of the car seems to go in slow motion. She waves a hand to her boss and is ready to ring the bell when she notices that the door is half open. Riah gets in and calls Clara’s name, no reply, that’s so strange, Clara is the most organized person she knows, why would she let the door open?

She doesn’t have time to call again when she gets to the main bedroom and everything crumbles.

In another time, Riah would have just stayed quiet and absorb the horror just like she had been taught to.  She would have adapted herself to the situation and think on a way out of the shock.

But now she just screams.

She screams until her throat hurts; she walks to the bed falls on her knees, taking Clara’s little hand on hers and breaking into choked sobs. She reads the message written in Gallifreyan, written in blood.

_Only the stronger one survives, sister._

Somebody holds her. Sarah Jane pulls her to her chest, tells her that everything is going to be alright, that she has called the police. Hadn’t she gone? Had her scream been so loud?

 _Nothing is alright,_ Riah thinks because Clara is dead and is her fault. _Nothing will ever be alright._

She passes out.

The police come to interrogate her in the hospital, while Riah is awake enough to be happy that her bio dampers are still working and that they didn’t give any aspirin. The officer tells that she was the last person that saw Clara Oswald last night; that no one saw the teacher come in or out of the house in the morning.

 _He staged it_ , she thinks and refrains herself of laughing hysterically. _Of course, he did, he probably knew the exact second of my arrival._

Riah listens to the officers’ question without really listening, the only thing that she can think is Clara’s body lying in a pool of blood, her chest open and her heart resting in her hand, like an offering. She thinks about Clara’s grandmother, living alone in Lancashire thinking that her granddaughter was safe, she thinks about her soulmate all the way back to Scotland, writing letters by hand for his little English teacher.

 _All of that gone thanks to me._ There has been centuries since the last time that she has felt a death so close. Centuries to someone to be close enough to her to care.

So when the questions become more inquisitive, Riah can’t do anything but tell the truth, and she does, as it is _humanly_ possible.

“He is my brother,” the words come out with all the hate that both of her hearts can carry. “His name is Lake.”

The eyes of the officer wild but he composes himself quickly, Sarah Jane stares at her from the chair at the side of her bed with horror.

“Did you know about his _activities_ before?” he asks her, it’s her turn to lie.

“I knew he was a monster, since the beginning in the orphanage,” the truth comes humanized, refined of every day in Gallifrey that she spent looking at that strange boy that became a dangerous, sadistic man.

“Why didn’t you report him?”

“No one would have believed me and he would have killed me,” tears down her face, “I just wanted to escape.”

“I think it’s enough for now, officer,” Sarah Jane says getting up from her chair. “Please. She is only a kid and has suffered a great shock.”

The policeman nods but he asks one last question. “Can you tell us where we can find him?”

 _You never will._ “No, I’m sorry.” _You will never have a chance against any of them, you are less than animals in their eyes._

Sarah Jane insists in Riah to go with her after that and Riah is too tired to refuse her, too tired to pretend that she is strong enough to not break down. She should be back in the TARDIS, planning how to get Lake and make him pay. But for this moments she just wants to lie down and pretend that she is part of this place, that she is really the age that she looks like. That she is just a terrified young woman that just lost her best friend.

They tell Clara’s grandmother about it and she is surprised how the fragile old woman keeps herself together, when before that Riah had just thought that such news would finally kill her. The Time Lady is the one taken to the station to identify the body while the old woman is still in the nursing home. She expects the old woman’s rage, any accusations, after all, is her fault. If it wasn’t for her Lake would have never touched Clara.

But Euphemia Oswald just hugs her and her tears wet the shoulder of her coat.

“We have to tell Basil,” she says when they are returning to the hotel where Euphemia is staying. “Clara, she… Was planning to stay another month with him next summer because she stayed with me at Christmas.”

The funeral is two days later, coffin closed, even when Lake hadn’t hurt Clara’s face at all. Riah is glad for it, she doesn’t want that image in her head, the reminder of how he butchered her friend just to break her.

She recognizes the man when almost all the people have left, the same man in Clara’s pictures, except that dressed entirely in black and with his eyes reddish from crying.

“Mr. Frazier?” she says and the grey-haired man turns around from the grave to her.

“You’re are Nina?” Riah manages a soft smile.

“That’s how she called me.”

“Are you returning to Scotland today?” she asks later when they are walking around the graveyard.

“I was about to leave to the station just now,” Mr. Frazier says, “I told Euphemia that I could stay for a time, but she says that she will go back to the home.”

“She talked about you,” he says after some minutes of uncomfortable silence, “said that you were a hero.”

“Nothing of sorts,” the Time Lady says bitterly and expects to him to tell her that it wasn’t her fault like everyone did the past few days, but he doesn’t. “I would have been a hero if I had stayed away, but… I guess I was sentimental and others paid the price.”

“There has been no luck? To find this man?” Mr. Frazier asks, clenching his fists.

“I don’t think they will ever be able to find him,” she says, hoping that the man wouldn’t do something reckless to avenge his soulmate.

“You make him sound supernatural.”

“He is too clever and quick,” Riah admits harshly,” and a smug sadistic bastard that cares nothing about human life.”

“Has he killed someone before?” the Scottish man asks and Riah looks at him, to her own surprise, she tells the truth, why does it matter now?

“He killed one of our siblings,” she says, biting her lips at the memory. “Put a knife through their heart. Nobody helped me, nobody listened. They just watched. I had little hope it would be different in any place, that’s why I kept moving.

“But… “she continued when they arrived the station, “if anyone would be able to find him, it would be me, and if I could, I promise you, I’d make him pay.”

“Do it, then,” Mr. Frazier says, his blue eyes cold and unforgiving. “Stop him.”

He is serious, she knows it, another person watching that situation would object; saying that it is madness, that she is a young woman with all her life ahead to care about revenge for someone that she has known for a couple of years.

This is pure emotion and Riah knows it, for both of them, they are grieving and her common sense just tells her that she has to get off of that planet and that system and stay in her TARDIS, alone, where no one else could hurt her or get hurt by her enemies.

But she hadn’t listened to that since centuries ago when she got out of Gallifrey, she had buried her pain and rage deep inside and concentrated in gain her freedom. Now knowing that the same monster is out there laughing of her just makes her want to end it. No matter if she ends up being like him, no matter if it’s vengeance; she has never claimed to be a hero and she is tired to pretend that ending _him_ wouldn’t end the things for good.

“I will,” she says burying her eyes in Frazier’s so he knows she isn’t lying. The man nods and turns around when a voice announces the next bus to the airport, he pulls out something from the pocket of his coat and gives it Riah. The Time Lady takes a deep breath when she opens the jewellery box and sees two gold bands.

“I want you to take this,” the man says,” in case you ever find this Doctor person.”

“I—I can’t,” she shutters staring at him with horror, the guilt going down her stomach. She knew that he and Clara had spent time together but never imagined that…

“They are nothing for me anymore. I was going to give it to her when she went to Glasgow for the spring but… Now everything that I can think is that while I was buying them she was— “he stops covering his face with one hand and taking a deep breath. Riah turns her gaze away from him to the little box.

“Thank you, Mr. Frazier,” the grey-haired man nods one last time and Riah doesn’t know if hug him, wasn’t that what human did to grieving relatives? But instead, she watches him disappear in the crowd of people and follows her way back to her TARDIS.

She has been on this time too long.

The hum of the TARDIS is welcoming and understanding, but when Riah reaches the console, the labels don’t move. Her second mother knows what she thinking, what she thought at the moment that that box was given to her. She won’t leave Riah change anything.

 _Why?_ She asks through their bond. _You think that_ they _take their own rules seriously? Do you think that they haven’t wasted time using people, eras, entire races, for their own proposes? They are real curators as I am a hero._  

But the TARDIS doesn’t reply and Riah goes to her room, getting rid of her black clothes and staring at her seminude body in the mirror. Her face hasn’t aged a day and it never will until centuries later. She sits in the floor and starts to the cornrows of her hair, thinking for hours on her next move.

Lake had staged everything from the beginning, she realizes bitterly. Luke Smith was never the target; he was just a bait to her to stay in that place, to take ruts. He had always known that she would be expecting to attack the child, that’s why he had gone with Clara. She wouldn’t have stayed for little, simple, sweet Clara. Someone that didn’t have any role in the future, except that she did. She had people that loved her, Riah had loved her.

And Lake had seen that since the beginning.

Riah braids her hair back and takes out the rings that her friend’s soulmate had given her. They hang on her neck in a chain after that.

She knows, she needs to say goodbye to the Smiths, she can’t leave them as she did with Susan and her grandfather, not after this, she has done too much noise and just disappearing would be too suspicious.

Besides, they are good people and have treated her with more kindness that she will ever deserve for putting them in danger.

Luke jumps on her arms as always and she tries to smile, his parents are still dressing in black, they ask her if she is alright.

“Actually, I need to talk to you two. Alone,” she says rubbing the little boy’s hair.

“Have you accepted the protection of the police already?” she asks when the child has gone away, Sarah Jane nods.

“But they told us that you won’t,” George says and Riah scoffs.

“They could never protect me, not from him, but I haven’t been entirely honest with you…”

“You mean you stayed here because you thought your brother would come for our son?” Sarah Jane interrupts and the dark-skinned woman stares at her with horror. “I figured it out after what happened with Clara. Why would you be so eager to become a nanny after all? You were a clever girl with a better-paid job. You stayed to protect our son.”

“And now I’m leaving to do the same,” Riah says and rises a hand before the couple can protest. “Please, this is my fault, I was arrogant, I thought that I could catch one of them. I thought that their objective was Luke but they were playing me all the time. I shouldn’t have stayed for more than a year in the first place.

“I love your son,” she continues softly, “and you have been more kind to me than I deserve, especially after all of this. If you stay, if I stay, you’ll still be a target. I can’t keep doing this but I wanted to say goodbye to you. Properly. I’ve run away like a thief too many times.”

Riah is surprised that she can’t hold back the tears this time, this body has always been more given to cry than the other one. Sarah hugs her tightly and George puts a hand on her shoulder. These humans, so far away, in evolution, in time. And yet so warm, so full of hope.

“Why do you have to go?” Luke cries later in her neck and Riah takes a deep breath holding him close. She reminds herself that the TARDIS had been kinder with her in the matter of this family’s future, she knows they make it, they will be one of the many that will aboard the ships out of the planet. But somehow the fact that she can take them there to fix it still causes anxiety to creep on her stomach.

“There is bad man that is chasing me, bug, I have to go where the police tell me so they can catch him,” the lie comes easily, it’s easy to lie to a child that will probably forget her, even when she won’t forget him.

“Will you come back?” the boy asks and the Time Lady smiles sadly. She could make him see her again, go to the TARDIS and appear in a distant ship some decades in the future. But then she would have to explain what she is and she doubts that she will ever have to heart to do that.

“Of course, darling,” Riah lies, but he will forget. “I will, one day.”

The tears finally come when she is walking away from the house and the Smiths wave their hands to her. Riah suppresses a sob as she waves back one last time.

When she gets in the TARDIS, the letter, that letter she had long forgotten in the console, is at plain sight, as if the TARDIS had just remembered the date when Riah had to read it.

The handwriting is unknown to her.

 

 

 

_Riah,_

_If you are reading this_ , _Clara Oswin Oswald has been murdered by Lake. I know how you feel now, you are angry, you want revenge. I can’t help you with that._

_But know this: you will survive._

_Because no matter how painful you think that this is now, there are worse days coming._

_Stay strong, don’t let them see the damage._

_River Song._

“Who the hell are you?” Riah murmurs at the paper.

* * *

 

 

She knows she can’t find Lake right away, the bastard is too good travelling, too good hiding and Kovarian might be protecting him. So, she chooses to go for the smaller fishes first.

Creek and Stream seem to have given up on her search or maybe they are just on a mission. Posing as a marriage in a human colony during the 30th century with the names of Maxton and Camryn Darden. Riah frowns when she sees the names but then remembers that not all of her siblings were actually related.

Her plan is simple; she will fight fire with fire. They have forced her to live in the run, she will see they do the same. Let’s see who is the one that breaks and goes to Gallifrey first.

But the truth is that she doesn’t need them to go Gallifrey, she needs them to get them to Lake and if they are as spoiled and naïve with him now as they were in Gallifrey, Riah doesn’t doubt that the puppets will be a guide to their master.

She begins to plants the seeds, suddenly her siblings’ faces are in the reports of numerous crimes, she travels forwards to know what are the next names they are going to take and makes sure that they are not received in any place.

And when they are ready, she draws a neon light to herself. She becomes a virus, a parasite, there is no secret of the Time Lords that she doesn’t pick, no computers she doesn’t hack. All those years after leaving Susan had been solely work; Riah puts all that knowledge to the test.

When they capture her, she wants to be sure that she can drag them down with her.

“I never believed you to be so eager to come back,” Wadi says when they tuck her in her cell. She doesn’t resist, just holds her sister’s clear gaze. “You could have made less noise, ‘The Codebreaker’, really? Always dramatic.”

“Projection much?” Riah arches an eyebrow and Wadi wrinkles her nose, bending down where the older Time Lady is sat.

“You can’t escape anymore, Riah, you’re outnumbered, you don’t have your TARDIS,” she smirks and touches the rings in her chain. “We are going home now.”

“I know you are not taking me to Gallifrey,” Riah says when her sister gives her back to her. “Pretending to be officers and going around in a ship that is not yours. You are not Kovarian’s puppet anymore. You’re Lake’s, no matter what you do, Wadi, it’s you who is the prisoner here, not me.”

“I’m not the one locked up in a cell.”

It’s Riah’s turn to smile.

“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

* * *

 

The first breath in a new body is always strange for any Time Lord or that’s what Riah has always though. This one is hard, sharp and the air is wet, the drops of the incessant rain that is falling over her.

She had been so careful setting the trap, even tried to help that time agent that got into mess for being sent after her. The poor man had been just collateral damage.

But it appeared that the biggest fault of her last face had been the arrogance. She had thought that they would take her to where Lake was, since she had exposed them and they clearly weren’t in Kovarian’s favour no longer. But instead of that, the ship had landed in a deserted, rainy planet and Riah pushed outside and shot three times in the back before she had opportunity to react.

She sees Wadi over her, still holding the blaster in one hand a recorder in the other. Her voice inexpressive and robotic.

“The subject overcame a slow process this time. From a woman in her mid-twenties to a woman in her thirties. Three shots on the back. It’s unknown if the subject has changed before this.”

Subject…

_No. Not again._

“What have you done to her?” the time agent asks, he is in the same place he had been when they came out of the ship, hold down at gunpoint by Stream. How long had this regeneration taken?

“Don’t worry, Agent Daniels, once we are done with her, you can take her with you. The Codebreaker has to face justice after all,” Wadi kneels over Riah and tosses her hair away from her face. “Now, before we continue, Riah, tell me how many times you have changed.”

The feeling of deja vú is not uncommon amongst time travellers and the one that she has at this moment is not the exception. The same way of talking, the same questions. The same rain? No, they are not in Gallifrey…

But had happened once: screams and shots, regeneration energy and a countdown. One, two, three, four…

And the same answer.

_You will never know._

Her fist crashes against Wadi’s face before she can ask again.

Bless the side effects of the first fifteen hours after regeneration, the additional resistance helps her when Wadi hits her back with the blaster.

It happens quickly, Riah makes her sister trip and punches her in the stomach, the blaster falls to the ground and before Stream can react to them, Riah has Wadi at gunpoint, holding the redhead Time Lady by the neck.

“Drop the weapon, Stream,” she says and her new voice sounds indeed older, harsher, with a different accent.

“Don’t!” Wadi screams. “Shoot her!”

“I wouldn’t do that, sister,” Riah pressed the gun against Wadi’s head. “Do you think that you are the only ones that can press a trigger many times? Shall I _count_ like you did? How many lives do you think that _you_ have, Wadi?”

“You wouldn’t shoot me, Riah,” Wadi’s voice is full of confidence. “You can’t, you always believed you’re better than us.”

“I never said that I was better,” the older woman whispers, “I just said that I was _not_ like you.”

She presses the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Wadi, Stream and Creek are mentioned in Lake's terrifying audio diary in _The Lady in the Lake_ , though there was never much about their personalities since the story begins when they re already dead. So, I decided to use them free here, since there is no characterization in canon to contradict me.[return to text]
> 
> 2\. The Twelfth Doctor is not the Doctor in this fic, neither he is River's soulmate. Just a Scottish guy. Since he canonically is of a new regeneration circle, I decided to have him separately and nodding my other OTP.[return to text]
> 
> I hope you liked this chapter. Comments are appreciated.


	4. Dead Girl Walking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Open the door!” a female voice yells. “Riah, open the door! Three!”
> 
> She does.
> 
> And everything happens absurdly fast.
> 
> H-One falls over her when she does. She enters while half-grabbing, half-supporting herself in a younger girl that looks at both women with a mix of terror and confusion. Riah takes her sister on her arms, H-One looks at her and the girl with big, scared eyes.
> 
> “What happened?” Riah asks, “Did they hurt you? Who is she?”
> 
> “It’s… it’s too late. Two.” H-One mutters and the older woman can she is dying. “Run, you must run, Riah. She, she is one of us… She… One.”
> 
> Riah can barely get the girl out of the way when the Weeping Angel comes out of her sister’s eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry for this long wait, this chapter was so difficult to write that I had to break half of the scenes for the next because it was getting too long (almost 15k words... And counting) and I really wanted to publish so you guys wouldn't think I abandoned the story. Plus that urge for finishing made me fast the pacing of some scenes too much and it didn't look well. 
> 
> So, here is this other monster of 9k words opposed to the monster of maybe 20k words. 
> 
> Unbeta, my beta is busy, so all the mistakes are mine.
> 
>  **Trigger warning for this chapter** for implied torture and child abuse. 
> 
> River's fourth face: [Caroline Dhavernas](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/doblaje/images/3/33/Caroline_Dhavernas.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111210225444&path-prefix=es)
> 
> Kovarian's second face: [Miranda Otto.](https://shanahan.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/OTTO-Miranda-colour.jpg)
> 
>  **Music for this chapter:** [_Stay_ from _Interestellar_.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca_Cv7seV4Y)

_Tick, tock, goes the clock..._

She doesn’t let Stream blink after Wadi’s body falls limp on the ground, bleeding out by the chest and then glowing. Her next bullet goes in her sister right shoulder, she drops her weapon and Riah runs, punching Stream on the stomach and then in the head with the back of the blaster.

She looks at her sister regenerating, the rain falling over them, they had planned to just kill her there and count how many she had left, probably to tell Lake later. He had left them to do the dirty work, couldn’t even kill her himself.

_And all your years undone…_

But she knows, she can just kill these two, permanently, to send a message. Who will blame her? They were going to kill her for an _experiment_. Nobody would look for them anyway, here in this desolated, rainy planet.

She charges the blaster and points to Wadi’s new body, unconscious, a little younger, fair-haired.

“What are you doing?” the time agent asks her; he is at some inches from Stream.

“Quiet.”

She can let them rot here, yes, that would be the expected thing to do to survive…

 _Once you’re outside, your life is the only one that you should care about,_ Kovarian’s voice grunts in her mind. _Why would you care about them, my girl? They are failed experiments._

Riah drops the weapon, her left hand trembling at that thought coming to her mind after so many years. She just told them that she is not like them, she is not anyone’s puppet. Not Kovarian’s or Lake’s. If she kills them, she will only make Kovarian happy for seeing her conditioning still holding and Lake satisfied of her breaking again.

The weapon breaks in pieces under her boot. And Wadi moans, opening new eyes and looking at their unconscious sister.

“Stream? What did you do to her, you— !”

“Back with us, then?” Riah deadpans and Wadi tries to get up falls again. “The first regeneration is always the worst, though I have always been lucky with the illness aftermath. It seems that the same can’t be said about you.” She kneels to her sister place, Wadi looks at her with rage.

“What are you waiting for?” the girl spats, “two shots in the hearts, Riah, you know the drill better than anyone.”

“You are wasting your lives by being at Lake’s side,” Riah says, inexpressive. “Kovarian doesn’t want you anymore. She never wanted you, you weren’t as valuable as me or the girls. None of you was. Why are you wasting your life when you are free?”

“Free?” Wadi laughs, “You were always so naïve, Riah. Do you really think that because Mother doesn’t want us we are free? Do you think that _you_ are free?” Wadi gets up on her knees, her clear eyes full of hate. “The Mighty Riahvelsodva, legendary warrior of Gallifrey. You just got lucky,” she spats,” you’re a spoiled little girl that never knew what was to live in the deserts. To cling to life while the hunger consumes you.

“Tell me, Riah, why do you pretend that you are any different from the other Time Lords? Rindle was your little soft spot but don’t pretend that didn’t think about us as monsters. Lake saved us. You abandoned us, all of us; in the moment that you found your precious TARDIS. You’re a coward just like _them._ ”

“You’re finished?” Riah says, her voice controlled, the blaster still in her hand. She walks around her sister. In another time, she would have shot Wadi just for calling her a coward. Strange, emotions feel different in this body. Or maybe is just the numbing of the regeneration sickness. “You think that being considered a failed experiment was a bad thing? That you missed something because she considered you less than me or the girls? You are stupider than I thought, Wadi.

“Why do you think that she let you go where you wanted when you were children? Why do you think that she spent more time around babies and toddlers?” Riah makes a sound that could be a laugh if it wasn’t so distorted. “You had an identity already, you, Lake, you had parents and a mean to escape, instead you decided that a cage was better. I never had that and thanks to you neither did the girls. You think your parents were bad because you were poor? I would have gladly died with mine.”

“Done, then,” Stream’ voice sounds behind her, she is holding a knife against the time agent’s throat. Damn this numb sense, how hadn’t she noticed that she had moved? “Drop the weapon or he dies.”

“I think we already had this conversation, sister.”

“And you, as always, never listen,” Stream snarls, “drop the blaster, Riah, I will blow his head off this time.”

“Not if I kill you first.”

“No!” the man screams, Riah turns around quickly and shoots, but instead on hitting her sister, it’s the time agent who falls dead in the ground. He had put himself in front of the blast that she had aimed for Stream, who looks at his body shocked and doesn’t notice her sister’s second shot.  

In the end, there is the three of them again, Wadi crawls to Stream’s new regenerated body while Riah kneels over Andrew Daniels’ corpse. Idiot, why had he done that?

 _Maybe he realized that you were the monster,_ Kovarian’s voice says in her head and for the first time, she doesn’t disagree. She had come to this place out of revenge, killed her sisters, there was no other world.

She feels that it should matter more to her. It should, but strangely, it doesn’t, not as it had in her last face.

Her sisters’ curses are the last thing she hears before zapping away to the vortex.

_Tick, tock._

_Now, you know._

_Kovarian, has won._ [ 1 ]

* * *

 

She shoots every Dalek in the simulation. Perfect. It always had to be perfect.

_One._

This is what she was meant to be.

_Two._

The alternative was pain or death.

_Three._

Or worse: nothing. The void, the non-existence.

_Four._

“Riah,” the young woman stops her shots and turns around. Madame Kovarian stands in front of her. She hasn’t grow used to her handler new face. Her previous face was stony but easier to read. Now, Madame’s features are sweeter and somewhat more beautiful, but for Riah is difficult to tell when comes praise or punishment. “Come to meet the children.”

Riah nods, leaving her weapon down and following her mentor. During these few days, she has been avoiding crossing paths with the new children. It’s strange, but at night, even when she can hear some mild cries. Of one of the older girls, she supposes, but never screams, like it was when she was a child.

The children are in the training hall, formed in a line one next to another. There is one of the boys that hadn’t been in the executions, he seems to be the oldest of the group; around thirteen, dark-haired and with a sad expression. Contrast with his siblings, who now just have blank faces.  

“Attention, children,” Kovarian begins,” today you will begin your training, this is Riahvelsodva, our most talented asset and your older sister. She will be supervising your progress and report any mistake or anomaly directly to me,” Kovarian turns around to Riah while saying that. “Is that understood, girl?”

“Yes, Madame.”

Kovarian starts to point at the children, from the youngest to the older.

“Beck,” she says pointing the youngest girl in the line. She seems to be about seven years old, with big brown eyes and straight black hair. Kovarian then looks at the other trio, that looks around the same age.

“Stream and Creek, this two are from the same parents,” Riah nods, indeed the girl and boy look similar, the round faces and grey eyes.

“Wadi,” this girl actually smiles proudly and takes a step front when Kovarian names her. Riah blinks at her, she has never imagined that a child could smile to Madame Kovarian.

But of course, she has been the only child here.

“Tarn,” the boy bows his head to Riah, his eyes holding an almost manic fear. Riah would like to smile at him, but she knows it’s useless.

“Lake,” Riah recognizes the boy that she saw smiling in the execution, his gaze meets hers and Riah sees a sort of mania that she has only seen in some of the most… Insistent Time Lords of the Capital, the ones that follow President Rassilon like a cult.

“And this is Rindle, our oldest boy.”

“Sister,” that takes Riah by surprise, this none of the children has said a word until now. Rindle holds her eyes firmly and there is a determination that recognizes there. Not like Wadi’s wish to please or Lake’s intense stare. It’s a look that of defiance, that she has seen before…

The times that she has seen her own eyes in the mirror.

“Rindle,” she nods at him, carefully trying to read Kovarian’s face. But her lovely features don’t change of that confusingly sweet smile.

“Alright, my girl,” she says,” I leave them under your care, I have to look after the little ones.”

A chill runs down Riah’s back, but she keeps her face calm. Now she knows why Kovarian has given her the oldest children to her care. How couldn’t she notice it?

There are four girls missing.

And none of them is older than five years old.

 

* * *

 

Riah forces against the door. Her key doesn't seem to match in the TARDIS door.

“What?” She pushed them the key again and pushed the door. ”What's the matter with you? Let me in.[ 2 ]

The door doesn't open, instead, a flow of telepathic energy comes and almost knocks her out. The anger and the disappointment go through her and Riah growls.

“Oh, what I was supposed to do? Let them kill me?” The TARDIS sends an image to her head. ”Oh, stop it. He put himself in the way, I wasn't going to kill him and Stream was going to regenerate. What does it surprise you anyway, _Mother?_ Do you think that this is the first time I’ve killed?”

The TARDIS sends another wave and the woman kicks the door in fury.

“You really think that I wanted to do this? To be this? Do you really think that I didn’t fight? I’m sorry that you didn’t get a better child but this is what I am! Maybe if you would have protected my parents better I would have been different!”

She knows that is not the TARDIS’ fault, but the words come up, sharp and cruel. It has been years since she had felt this naked rage. And is not like the rage she had felt when she had found Clara, that was mostly guilt, because it had been her fault. Riah doesn’t feel guilty for killing that man and she knows it’s wrong because he was innocent and it was a stupid and meaningless death. Because if she keeps like this, she will end up like the _thing_ that Kovarian wanted.

But, oh sometimes she thinks it would be easier, less painful, just to succumb, just to stop fighting.

“I’m sorry,” she manages to say after some minutes. She sitting on the ground with her back pressed against the door. “I wish—   I don’t— I can’t— This body feels different than the others. Not just older, it’s just… That I don’t think I care anymore, Mother, all I feel now is rage and wish to it to be over.”

She seats there for hours, waiting for some response, but the doors won’t open and this new body has not been fed anything yet. Not that she was well fed was she was a prisoner in her sisters’ ship anyway.

Riah gets out of the warehouse and wonders, find a small food station that is open at such a late hour. The attendant looks at her up and down, questioning her wet clothes, something impossible in a space station, but he is kind enough to not ask about them.

“Bad night?” the man asks instead, Riah stops eating – well, _devouring_ – the food and nods. “You work close? In the factory?”

“I was kicked out of my house,” Riah says, it’s not a lie in some ways.  

“That’s terrible,” the man exclaims, his tone seems sincere despite his initial disdain. Riah just nods, she feels kind of stupid for not being able to master her own ship, no matter how strong their symbiotic relationship is. She is still a Time Lady.

Huh.

She has never thought about the title with such pride.

“Do you need a place to stay?” the man asks and Riah just looks at him, suspicious. Too much kindness for a dirty strange in her opinion. But nevertheless, she nods, maybe the human will let her eat in peace. “There are taking people in the factory, they fix ships, you see? Maybe you can find a job there, I heard from some blokes that they even have little rooms for the workers.”

Riah scoffs softly and looks at her empty plate. Maybe he is right, maybe she should go, the TARDIS seems to have decided that she has no place inside for now, that the universe is closed until… Until what? Until she redeems herself? Of what? Of killing an innocent? Is not like it’s the first time and she doubts it will be the last.

It’s also the matter of her siblings, she doubts that Wadi and Stream are going to give up the hunt, not if they keep having such devotion to Lake. And if they outnumber her worse by bringing the others, she knows very well that not even with her best skills she would stand a chance.

And she has done this before, staying around, working. But the later times were just full of too much pain.

Riah knows she can just go, use her vortex manipulator and leave the TARDIS until her little fuss ends, but some gut instinct tells her that she is meant to stay here for some reason.

 _H-One would probably say that that is me being time sensitive._ A tiny smile forms in her lips. _Or maybe I am just tired._

 _One year,_ she tells herself, clenching her teeth. _And this time I have to do it right._

“Can you point me the right direction?” she asks the man, trying to make the smile as convincing as possible.

She does what she is told, as always.

Her siblings learn what she learned: weapons, surviving, fighting, with the time, Riah is sure that Madame will give them either rings or cheaps vortex manipulators to travel at least a few weeks back. But at the same time that seems unlike since their caretaker keeps them ignorant about time travel and what the Time Lords are, aside from being the people that rule Gallifrey. 

The children grow just like she had, but with the time she notices the differences between their upbringing and hers, how Kovarian treats them. She and the other controllers in the base separate the children in two groups. Lake, Wadi, Tarn, Stream, Creek and Beck are kept in a separated part of the building, away from Brooke, H-One, H-Two and O, who they start to call “the girls”, and Rindle sleeps in Riah’s room, that is the closest to Madame’s.

Sometimes she catches Rindle staring at the window at night, looking at the deserts.

“Do you think they are still there?” he asks.

“Who?” 

“Our people, or did the ones in the big collars kill them all?” Riah would laugh at that description if the boy’s tone wasn’t so thoughtful. 

“There are a lot of people in the Drylands, at least closer to the city,” the reply comes automatically. She knows there are people out there, small farmers that work to provide the cities, almost forgotten by the big citizens of their insides except when they were discovered doing things that were outside the law. 

Rindle rests his chin over his knees. “He knew what would happen, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“Lake, he was the one that found the people of the city in the first place. He came back one night, after telling Mama that he would go hunting, we got scared and searched for him everywhere and he came back with the people that took our parents away.” 

Riah looks at him with horror remembering Lake’s face during the executions. What kind of person would do that to their own blood? Had their parents been such terrible monsters? 

“I don’t know what we are doing here,” Rindle continues, “Madame says that they took us in because we are special because we are going to be like you and they had mercy. But you don’t like to be here, do you?” 

Riah gets up of the bed and takes the boy’s shoulders, “Hush! You can’t say things like that!” 

“The soldiers say you tried to escape,” he narrows his eyes, not even flinching for at her harsh grip. “They said you were the one that almost killed Madame.”

“I did not, that… That was something completely different.” Riah lets him go and curls up on herself, taking a deep breath. She was a child at that time, a newly regenerated, stupid, scared child that thought that could leave easily. She had paid for it, greatly. “You shouldn’t talk like this, Rindle, if you don’t like your brother then beat him in training. Madame already has you in her good graces, if you keep going, you may make your staying here pleasant.” 

“Like you do?”  

“I’m not a favourite,” Riah murmurs resting her head on the pillow. “I am a dead girl walking.”

When the time passes, Kovarian’s preference of Rindle among the other children gets more obvious and Riah does everything to encourage it and try to blind their caretaker of her brother’s dangerous ideas. 

“Isn’t he quite talented with the sword, Madame?” she says.

“Not as much as H-One, my girl, but now that you say it, yes, he has improved,” Madame Kovarian comments, looking down in the hill where the children — thought for Riah it’s difficult to call them that now, with must of them grown — and caressing little O’s hair, while her younger pupil rests her head in her side. 

“I’m sure he will be ready for a mission in no time.”

Kovarian raises an eyebrow to her. “You seem very enthusiastic about that, aren’t you worried that your brother might take your place as our best warrior?” 

 _He can take it with my best wishes._ Riah thinks bitterly and raises her gun to the air.

The sound of the shot breaks and her siblings start to run.

Riah keeps a stony face while she watches them trap each other to get to finish the goal. 

“I can’t see them!” O says, grabbing Riah’s arm. “Who has won, sister?”

Riah puts down her visors and smiles. “Rindle.”

O smiles and Riah takes her hand while they go down the hill. Sometimes, Riah is marvelled of the innocence that her youngest sister still possesses. She wishes she had kept it that long.

“My children,” Madame Kovarian started when they were all reunited. “Given his applications in the last tests, your brother Rindle has been chosen to go to his first mission.”

Riah looks at every face, studying her siblings’ different reactions. Lake is upsetter about the results, of course. After all, he is the most accomplished shooter in all the base.

Wadi wrinkles her nose, always close to Lake, Tarn is pretty much the same, but as far he is the nicest of Lake’s ‘circle’. With the years she has examined this pattern of behaviour among her siblings; with the time they have grown more and more comfortable with the way that they are divided.

Madame Kovarian is always cryptic about her opinion of these particular dynamics and that makes Riah a nervous every time that she assigns a new test. Even when their handler seemed to be a lot softer with them —  especially with O and Brooke — that she has ever been with Riah; giving them a great deal of praising and avoiding some of the worst punishments. Yet at the same time, she doesn’t do anything to avoid the attachments between them, even when the lessons always point that the mission is first and that success is always over sentimentalism or survival.

Rindle has always been the only one that doesn’t fit in any category, just like her. Even when Brooke always points out that Riah receives special treatment for being the ‘original’ daughter. They are both separated by the experiences that shaped them. Riah can’t trust Kovarian again, and Kovarian doesn’t trust her either. And Rindle… Rindle is a mystery. He has never shown intentions of repairing bonds with his brother and keeps talking only to Riah and sometimes the younger girls, but he never shows that his behaviour as an attempt to impress Madame Kovarian, as Brooke does. 

“Very well, my children,” Madame says after finishing her speech, “you are relieved for today. Riah, you will dine with me, we need to discuss the mission’s statements.”

“Yes, Madame.” Rindle smiles at her, but Riah keeps her usual stony face.

“I will see you at down, big sister.”

The days that Riah dreads the most in the week are when Madame orders her to have supper with her. In those nights the Time Lady will have a smile in her beautiful face and ask Riah questions that make her squirm. Nights like that are the ones that remind her that her actions are judge every second, that any glance can be something that could kill her.

The dinners go almost always the same way, and tonight is no different, the two of them alone and Kovarian’s eyes fixed on her while she asks:

“Have any of your siblings asked you something?”

“Something like what, Madame?”

“Their creators? Yours? To leave, maybe? They are not like you, my child. Nor like the girls. They grew up half savages, filled with ideas by the treacherous people that sired them.”

‘Creators’. She always calls them that, never ‘parents’.

“I do not know of any stray thinking, Madame, you know that I would inform you if I did,” Riah keeps her eyes fixed on her handler. She is not entirely lying, though, she really hasn’t seen anything except the typical talks around the missions and the vicious competitions between her siblings, if they are planning anything, they must be as good as she is hiding her own thoughts.

Kovarian gives her a sly smile. “Of course you would, you are my girl after all.”

It costs Riah a world of effort to not scream when she says that.

The night before the mission she is sitting in the roof of their base. She comes at night, to see the citadel shining above them, proud and cold, even with its golden light. The city of the Time Lords. A city of murderers.

“That’s quite hypocritical of you, sis,” Riah turns around to find Lake sat some distance of her, smirking. _How didn’t I feel him close? How didn’t I feel him in_ my mind? _Damn, the little bastard is getting good._ She is not sure that she will ever get used to Lake not being touch-telepath like the rest of them.

“I will take that as a compliment,” he says and Riah curses.

“Stop that.”

“As you wish,” Lake sits at some distance of her and the young woman clutches herself away from him. He is looking at the city with an expression that seems a mix of amazement and hunger. “It always seems to be another world compared to this place or the Drylands, don’t you think, Riah? We seem like insects compared with all the luxury that they have, all that power, all those possibilities.”

Riah doesn’t reply, she just lifts her mental walls again. Lake’s interest in the Capital, in the life of the Time Lords, is one of the reasons why Kovarian hasn’t put him on mission yet, no matter his talents. That hunger that he seems to show without claims. Maybe the reason why Madame Kovarian keeps him around is that he hasn’t yet acted on it or he doesn’t know how.

“Have you told Rindle what tomorrow mission is for?” Riah clenches her jaw and Lake burst a laugh. “I’m not talking about the little political assassination that you have to do, sis. That’s irrelevant, I mean if you know _what_ this mission is for.”

“What you mean? This is to test Rindle’s abilities.”

Lake’s grin grows bigger. “Really? That’s what you think this is about? You're way more naive than I thought.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“She is testing your favouritism,” Riah frowns at the word,” oh, please, everybody in this base has a favourite. Mother Dearest’ one is surely Brooke, as heartbreaking as is for you to know it, my dear sister, she has been spoiling that girl rotten. H-One and H-Two are practically tied by the hip. And even Brooke has a soft spot for sweet little O. If you think that you can hide yours for our dear old Rindle, I am afraid that you need to look to our Mother’s face a little closer.”

Riah looks at him between surprised and disgusting. How is Lake, of all people, capable of reading Kovarian’s intentions? He, who thinks but in the next step of how becoming a stronger fighter? He who had betrayed his own kin in exchange of leaving the Drylands?

“And what about you? What are you going to do when your turn comes?” she spats. “Wadi, Tarn, Creek, Beck and Stream favourite you. Rassilon, they follow you, like you are some kind of leader. Rindle is your brother, but you don’t seem to include him, but aren’t you afraid for them, Lake? Aren’t they _your_ favourites? Because the stars know that I have no idea why they consider you theirs.”

Lake stands up, turning his eyes at her and then at the citadel again.

“ _The mission goes always before our survival_ , isn’t that what she always says? Except that it’s not _ours_. Or at least not including her. Is about needing her more than we need each other. And believe me, darling sister,” he leans over her pressing a hand on her cheek,”: when you see that there is no other way, you’ll see why they follow me.”

 

* * *

 

_Let me out._

She is trapped. Locked up. Confined.  

_Let me out!_

Her throat is being constricted, her arms are tied. Snakes. There are snakes around her wrists and ankles—

No.

No snakes. Cables. Cables all around her, holding her down, she opens her eyes and looks up, through the visor, everything is blue. And there is her handler’s face. No, her  _mother face_. And she is mad, serious, _disappointed._

“I gave you a home, a propose, a name, and this is how you repay me?” Riah wants to scream, but the oxygen barely reaches her lungs, she can’t _breathe._

 _No, no, please! Please, Madame! Please, Mother!_ She wants to scream, but Kovarian’s cruel face looks up to her and the restrains inside the suit tighten.

“No!” Riah gets up in her bed, panting and her throat soring, she puts a hand around it. _It’s just the lack of water, there are no restraints. I’m safe, I’m safe. I’m safe._

Riah looks around, listens to the sounds of the streets, her apartment. She gets up of the bed and goes to the bathroom, slashing her face with water and looking at the repletion in the mirror, trying to let her eyes used to it. Not her second face, the face of a girl, but this face, an adult woman with blue eyes and thick brown hair.

“Fourth body, Space Station Sanctorum, 36th century,” she whispers resting her body in the buddle. “Fourth body, Space Station Sanctorum, 36th century.”

She keeps breathing, shaking the rests of the memory out of her head. It has been three months and she knew that soon or later that being away from the TARDIS would case the repressed memories to come back. Her worst memories.

Riah curses and misses the TARDIS at the same time, she misses having a place that she can feel _hers_ , she misses her warm; and she hates her for being so stubborn. But at the same time, she guesses that she must get her own stubbornness from someone since she has no idea of how her parents’ temperaments were.

Sighing again, she prepares for her day. The job in the energy plant has been probably the lowest work that she has had in these two centuries, but is the best she can get without documents and to put a roof over her head and food in her stomach. Riah reminds herself every day that, it could be worse, that she could be trapped in a deserted land with zero resources.

There is some comfort in this place, in the anonymity of her job. She has just given a name; they didn’t even ask for a clear identity. She is Rianne, a simple worker that was kindly accepted by the director of the plant, nothing more. She always had a story planned before, a fiction to convince people, here it seems that is not necessary; she is not the first one to come and she won’t be the last.

It makes her sad sometimes, that with all the progress, all the technology that they have archived from the days she has seen in the past; being a number in a system is something that never changes.

“Hey, Rianne, how are you today?” Riah turns around at the voice, most of her co-workers don’t talk to her unless is necessary. Kevin is the —  at first kind of unwelcome — exception. “They say the boss is coming down for inspection.”

“Any reason?” Riah asks as they go down to their posts lower levels.

“Oh, I don’t know well, but Miss Ace says that there have been some strange people around looking for a criminal, some woman, she killed a time agent.”

“Oh?” Riah’s calm expression doesn’t alter, but her mind works at a mile per hour. It can be that the time agents are looking for the Codebreaker or her siblings must be looking for her. “Well, I hope they don’t disturb the work.”

“Oh, you’re perfect, aren’t you?” Kevin rolls his eyes. “I would give anything to something to shake this boring place.”

It takes a lot of effort to her to not snort at that, her siblings coming to Santorum would be anything but dull.

The director of the plant is a Mr. Thaddix, a small man around his seventies that sometimes comes down to check the processes with his daughter, Ace. Riah has only spoken to them once when she asked for a job and somehow they had pity of her ruined clothes and deadly pale face. Ace seemed nice enough but her father had a calculating stare that made Riah beware of him and make sure that she was barely noticeable after that.

That is what she does at this moment when they go down again with the supposed time agents. The passing line to the workers in a line to be inspected. She makes herself small, puts her head down, is weirdly easy on this body; with her too big clothes and her hair simply tied in a low bun like all the other workers. There is nothing that makes her stand out, they don’t even know she is not human.

The supposed time agents pass through her and Riah can see them listen to them, even when she doesn’t raise her head. One voice she recognizes, Beck, the other is unfamiliar. Could be Tarn? Or had Lake regenerated? Riah looks at them as they pass inspecting the workers.

Mr. Thaddix doesn’t seem quite happy about it after all this is just slowing the work.

“We are looking for a woman that killed a valuable officer,” Beck says, “a criminal and murderer that made herself being called the Codebreaker. Her real name is Riahvelsodva, she is a fugitive of the justice of her home planet and you will be rewarded for helping us find her.”

The workers shrug and look at each other, nobody seems to have something concrete. For a dangerous second, Riah feels the strange urge to laugh. Why did Lake send these two? Beck and Tarn never saw this face; they don’t even have a picture. Why didn’t Wadi and Stream come? They couldn’t be dead; she knows that they still had regenerations left.

“Alright,” Tarns says, “we also need to find this woman, if you have seen her, don’t doubt in contact us.”

This time a picture is passed and Riah’s blood freezes when she sees the face in it. _Don’t,_ she tells herself, lifting her mental shields again.

They are hunting H-One.

That image stays in her head all day, even when her brothers leave without recognizing her or noticing her presence. She comes back to the place where the TARDIS is, still with the perception filter working and hidden of strangers. Riah touches the door and presses her forehead in the wood, longing for some comfort.

“If they discover me, I’ll be dead, Mother,” she says, “they are hunting H-One and I don’t know why but it’s bad. H-One must be alone, if she were still under Kovarian’s protection they wouldn’t dare to touch her.”

It could be H-Two too, but H-One was the only one that she knew it had been out of Gallifrey, or that’s what she had implied when she had given Riah that letter all those years ago.

It has been time since she had thought about them. Her sisters, the sisters that she left behind. Maybe she was trying to get the others, Riah thinks when she is back on her house. Maybe she tried to get the others out and Kovarian discovered her.

Suddenly, a bang I the door kicks her out of her thoughts.

“Open the door!” a female voice yells. “Riah, open the door! Three!”

She does.

And everything happens absurdly fast.

H-One falls over her when she does. She enters while half-grabbing, half-supporting herself in a younger girl that looks at both women with a mix of terror and confusion. Riah takes her sister on her arms, H-One looks at her and the girl with big, scared eyes.

“What happened?” Riah asks, “Did they hurt you? Who is she?”

“It’s… it’s too late. Two.” H-One mutters and the older woman can see she is dying. “Run, you must run, Riah. She, she is one of us… She… _One._ ”

Riah can barely get the girl out of the way when the Weeping Angel comes out of her sister’s eye.

“Keep looking at it!” she barks at the girl. “Don’t blink! If you blink, you’re dead!”

Riah moves by instinct, not thinking, just acting. The little apartment has just two rooms and the bathrooms, so she moves quickly to grab the bag with her clothes. The girl is still immobile in front of the angel, but at least alive.

H-One body on the floor. Her open eyes seem limpid and black with the weak lighting of the house, she has a vortex manipulator in her wrist, Riah takes it. Run, she had said. She is one of us.

She wraps her arm tightly around the girl’s waist and they vanish before either of them blinks.

 

* * *

 

Rindle doesn’t disappoint during the first states of the mission.

The mark is an ex-member of the Council, a powerful Time Lady that was trying to make an uprising against the President. Normally, something like that would be fixed by sentencing that person to… disappear[ 3 ], but the President has decided to be kind, Madame Kovarian says. So, the woman will have a quick dead and some enemy of hers will be blamed.

They know the lady’s schedule and fortunately for them, she leaves her house every night to work extra hours in the office, or at least that’s the excuse she gave to cover her reunions with her rebels. So, they wait for her outside her house, hidden in the shadows.

It will happen fast, clean, just as they have been taught when is this kind of mission. The weapons have regeneration inhibitors and her brother’s aim is precise. The woman falls.

But when they go down to move the body to the place that they are supposed to carry it, Riah notices there are people coming close and pulls her brother sleeve, but Rindle just kneels in front of the woman. What is he doing? Riah goes forward, thinking something quick to distract the people that are advancing to them, but before she can say anything, one of them talks.

“I hope you didn’t hurt her, boy.”

“It’s just an aesthetic, she will fine.”

 _What?_ There were six three men and three women, Riah looks at Rindle, her brother steps away from the woman letting them carry her. One of the men looks at her up and down, Riah knows him, or at least, she has seen them before, he is one of the men that talked in the broadcasts that started the uprising.

“So, this is the girl?” he says and Riah puts her hand in her blaster. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, young miss. We are here to help you.”

“Help me?” she spats and looks at her brother. “You betrayed us, for this? What do you think it will happen when Kovarian finds out?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, sister, I would never betray you,” Rindle says, serious. “But you need to trust me now, there is something you need to see.”

“I won’t go anywhere with you,” Riah wants to scream, to slap him, to curse his ingenuity. How could he? He doesn’t know the price of this rebellion, these people don’t care about him, they don’t care about _any_ of them. “She won’t grant you pass after this, Rindle— “

“I don’t care what Kovarian will do, you need to see something,” her brother extends his hand to take her weapon. “Please, Riah, trust me.”

Riah wants to run away, to get away Rindle’s side before Kovarian finds out about this. Because she will find out, and then it will punishment, but Rindle clearly doesn’t care about that. She had never thought he was serious about escaping, always thought that were just rebellious thoughts that her brother had confessed to ease the pressure of the training and Riah had just indulged them because she had had them herself. But this? Allying with some idiotic traitors that probably would end dead or worse by the end of the week? Do they have a bullseye on their back already?

She looks at her brother and doubt plagues her, Rindle is intelligent, why would he follow them if they didn’t have something concrete?

She lowers her weapon, the words come out as bites. “If they discover you, brother, you are alone.”

Rindle just nods. “You won’t regret this, sister.”

Shivers run through Riah’s back while they cross the city. Her hands into fits as she follows her brother and his allies through the place, for people that know that their mere existence is in danger by having her close, they seem awfully confident about cooperation.

They stop over a - seemingly – abandoned building, they are three of them, the other ones went away with the woman. Riah raises an eyebrow to the place, doesn’t seem any different to any old abandoned thing in Gallifrey, they are many of them, especially when the political situation is complicated and houses are suddenly without owners.

“What is this place?” One of the rebels smiles at her while struggling with the locks of the gates, then makes a gesture of entrée.  Riah turns around at Rindle and he nods, a smile adorning his face.

“They had this before to save confiscated material that belonged to rebels, criminals and such,” one of the women explains, “they stopped using it years ago because of some of their caretakers… Huh, disappeared.”

“Executed?” Riah asks bluntly.   

“We don’t know, but with the time they have seemed to forget about this place and there are rather interesting things here.”

“And what does this have to do with me?”

“Look closer, Riah,” Rindle says and the light illuminates the place. She sees it then, a cabin-size cylinder that seems to have grown plants around. Riah looks at it and feels her head suddenly spinning.

“It’s a TARDIS,” she tries to keep her voice steady. “You brought me here to show me a TARDIS?”

“It’s not any TARDIS and you know that,” Rindle walks towards her and puts something in her hand. “You can feel the telepathic link, can’t you Riah? She doesn’t let anyone in, not even with this key. She was waiting for you; this is your parents’ TARDIS.”

 

* * *

 

Riah calls her Lily. 

But that’s not the first thing she does when they arrive the new planet, of course, the first thing she does is pin the girl against a three.

There are so many things going inside her head at that moment. Emotions that suddenly overwhelm her after months and months of numbness. She tries to blink the tears away, but she doesn’t know if they are because she kept her eyes open or because her sister had just died in front of her eyes.

“Who are you?” she hisses, the girl looks at her, terrified. “Why was H-One with you and what the fuck was that angel?”

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play with me, child! You were with her before she came to me. She said you were one of us,” Riah inspects her, nailing her fingers in her throat. A double pulse. Time Lord, then. “Which one are you?”

The girl shakes her head, sobbing and Riah shakes her, the waves of fury inside her growing wilder.

“Which one of them? Tell me! Are you H-Two? Tarn? Beck? Wadi?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what happened, I swear! I just remember waking up and that girl lifting me and then you and that monster. I swear I don’t know!” The girl keeps babbling and crying and Riah just gives up. She is telling the truth, damn her, that means that Riah is blind. About how close her siblings are in the chase, about what happened to the other girls and about what happened with that angel.

She lets the girl go and looks around, remembering the coordinates that she had typed in the vortex manipulator. The trees and the pinkish-yellow atmosphere are quite familiar, so the device didn’t flip, they are in Gidi.[ 4 ]

Riah checks the date, 22nd century,  she had been here fifty years ago, in her second body. Nobody would remember her — and even if they did, she looked completely different — and the people that will discover her sister’s body in the space station are yet to be born. For now, they are safe.

Riah turns around and looks at the girl, she is still where she left her, but now hiding her face in her knees, crying. She is small, smaller than any of the other girls around her age. Apparently, she doesn’t remember anything, Riah knows about cases of amnesia and disorientation after regeneration and judging for the little golden particles that still ling of the younger woman’s hair, it hasn’t been long since she changed.

She takes a deep breath and kneels before her.

“Alright, listen, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I don’t know what got into me.”

The girl raises her head and sinks her big grey eyes on her. “She was important to you, wasn’t she?”

 _They all were, in the only way that mattered. And I abandoned them. I left them with the wolves._ Riah tries to shake the sudden guilt that tries to drown her. She can’t change that past.

“She was my sister and it appears, that so are you,” the girl stares at her startled. “Has anything come back to you? Any memory? Any face?”

“No, I am sorry.”

“Your name?”

“If I had one, I don’t remember.”

The Time Lady sighs, it might take days until the memories come back. She explains it to her the best she can, trying to be kinder than when it had been explained to her. And her sister just nods and gives her a bright, innocent smile. She reminds her a lot of O – maybe she is O, for all she knows -, she wraps her arms around Riah in a tight hug, which leaves the older woman frozen for some seconds. She is definitely not used to this, this kindness and instant loyalty, not anymore.

“Come now, we need to find a city, if there is any, I lived on this planet before but I have no idea if where we are now.”

Her sister follows her and for a day and a half, Riah examines her to see if she can guess who she is or was, in this case. Slowly she notices that the younger woman has clothes that are for a quite bigger built or at least, bigger than her petite frame, but these are so ambiguous that it could be anyone.

Riah tries to tell her about Gallifrey, about their other siblings and the little one seems to grow happier of the idea of having more company, but no memory ensues.

Night falls and there is still no sight of lights, so Riah prepares a fire, takes the out the coats that she had packed in her bag and gives one to the girl. They eat some of the dissertated food that they have and Riah can’t help but chuckle as her sister’s eagerness.

It’s when they are lying next to each other to find heat when Riah asks again.

“Any sign of a name yet?”

“No.”

“How about I call you… Lily? Until then, at least.”

She doesn’t tell her that years ago, Madame had named her siblings after water themes and scientific formulas to make mock of their insignificance. They had carried those names with proud, maybe as defiance or at least, Rindle and the others had.

The girl turns around, her clear eyes almost shining with the light of the fire and the pinkish light of the Gidi sky.

“Lily,” she says, smiling. “It sounds good; it sounds… everlasting. But can I take it with one condition?”

“Of course.”

“What is your name?”

Riah frowns for a second, she hadn’t recalled that she hadn’t give it. “It was Riah, but I can’t use it anymore. Not in public. How about you give me a name too?”

Lily frowns and then locks eyes with her, then smiles. “Lilies grow in the water. How about River?”

The Time Lady smiles fondly at the effort of keeping the first two letters of her name. “Alright, that will do, then.”

Her sister snuggles against her, a childish smile on her sleepy face.

“River and Lily, they sound like names that should never be parted.”

After this night, neither of them will ever use another name.[ 5 ]

 

* * *

 

Riah walks inside the crowds of the Capital, she needs to get away. She needs to breathe.

She stumbles over people and they look at her, they are always the same stares. They recognize what she is: an unnatural thing, a mistake, a glitch in a perfect system.

“Never forget it,” Kovarian had always told her. “They abandoned you, Riah. I rescued you, I raised you.  _I am_ your mother.”

 _Lies, lies, lies._ The thoughts that the TARDIS pushed inside her mind drill in. The new images are clear in her head like she had always had those memories, even when she was too young to remember something like that.

She had entered in that TARDIS and flux the memories had almost knocked her out. The telepathic link with the sentient time machine had been almost instant like it had been a doormat.

The images passed in front of their eyes as if they were really there and not long dead. They entered inside of the TARDIS and her father put the engines to work with almost manic urgency. Her mother was holding her swollen belly and looking at the door with fear. She was beautiful, her hair had been a mass of wild golden curls.

Then Riah had blinked and her parents were where sat in some room of the TARDIS. Her mother even more dishevelled but happy, they were holding her: small, still covered in blood, in their arms. And they were smiling.

 _Child of the TARDIS,_ the rebels whispered. But Riah barely noticed them, she just looked at the ones that she had just tossed in the same bucket that the others for years. They had never been like _them._

“They wanted me,” she whispered and felt Rindle’s hand pressing over her shoulder. “They _loved_ me.”

Then they had moved, the TARDIS shook, the door was forced open and the soldiers entered. Riah saw her mother holding her as her life depended on it, when the truth was, that their lives had ended because of her.

“Riah?” Her brother had asked, but she didn’t want to watch any more of it, she knew what happened next. So, she ran, away from the rebels, from her brother, from the TARDIS and the truth.

She ends up in some alley of the capital, tears running down her face. She had always known that her parents had died because they had her, of course, that was the law, it was forbidden. But the notion that they had loved her, that they had wanted to keep her is like a stab. As painful as when she had realized that the woman who raised her had no problem leaving her to die.

The information that the TARDIS pushed inside her mind keeps going: Kovarian had tricked them, promised she would help them, said that she, as a scientist, as a doctor, found the laws absurd. She hadn’t been exactly lying in that part, Riah had always been, after all, her most fascinating experiment.

_Child of Criminals._

_Child of Lovers._

_Child of the TARDIS._

Rindle comes after that, doesn't say and anything and just holds her shoulders. 

"Why telling me now?" Riah croaks. "So I can be one more in this revolution of yours?"

"I'm not part of anything, Riah," Rindle says and sighs when she raises an eyebrow at him. "I just made a deal with them in exchange for their leader's life. They had access to that warehouse. I found about your parents while searching in Kovarian's things. I knew I couldn't get to it without an excuse to get out of the base and take you with me.”

“She will kill you for this,” Riah’s voice is flat and at the point, Kovarian never left her anything without a guard or detectors. “You can’t come back, Rindle.”

“I don’t plan coming back and neither should you,” he puts his hands over her shoulders. “You told me that once you had tried to escape. Now we have a clear pass out of here, Riah. That’s your TARDIS, you’re a Time Lady, we can get out of here.”

“What about the others?” she doesn’t deny that she wants to go away. Not now, not after knowing this.

“I’m sure that my brother had his own agenda.”

“Hmm, and Brooke?” Riah raises an eyebrow. “H-One and H-Two? O? What about them? We are just going to let them with _her_?”

“You know they won’t follow us, especially Brooke. No! You know it, they are faithful to her and they fear her. We don’t have time to get them out.”

Riah bites her lips, unsure, everything is happening too quickly. The last time she had tried to escape it ended on Kovarian confining her to _that suit._ She didn’t want to think about ending up there again or herself, but Rindle is right, they can’t stay. But the guilt of leaving the girls, especially O, who is still a small child, creeps in her mind.

“Alright,” she gets up, “but not now.”

Rindle sighs, “Riah, you said it yourself, I can’t come back- “

“You won’t, you will stay in the TARDIS, I will invent some excuse,” Riah starts walking but her brother calls her again.

“What if you don’t come back?” His voice is flat; they both know why is she coming back.

“Then leave without me,” the young woman says. She won’t blame him if he does. “And don’t look back.”

Madame Kovarian doesn’t seem surprised when she comes back to the base without Rindle. She waits for Riah in her office and doesn’t bother to reunite everyone in the training room.

“So, your brother has betrayed us, has he?”

Riah tries to keep her mental shields as thick as possible.

“Why do you say so, ma’am?”

“Where is he?”

“He wanted to see the city, ma’am, you know how he is, always curious. I thought that, with the success of his mission, that could be a little reward.“

Kovarian scoffs. 

"You know, when Rindle started I thought he would be free of your influences. Or at least, I thought that you would have a little more common sense to not share your rebellious thoughts so freely after your time in the suit. But alas, my best student has also fallen into this design fault."

Riah tenses and Kovarian bursts into laughter.

“Oh, girl, girl, girl, do you think that because I can’t read your minds I don’t have ears everywhere? Do you think that I would really forget that you tried to escape once?”

She stands from her desk and walks around it, smiling at Riah as she talks with a mocking, silky voice.

“Did you really think that I wouldn’t know that you had taken one of my most rebel experiments under your wing? I wouldn’t notice what you would try. Tsk, tsk. Oh, my girl, I thought you had improved. What did I tell you all those years ago? You’re a dead girl walking, Riah. I don’t give second chances.”

Riah freezes in her place and Madame Kovarian caresses her cheek. Lake had been right, it had been all a trap since the beginning, she had known that Rindle had been planning to escape. And him...

“Where is he?” she whispers, terrified. _Please leave, Rindle, please just run._

“Oh, I am sure that your other siblings will have no problem finding him,” Kovarian says. “After that, well, another lesson will be best. A little ride in your favourite space suit. And then, don’t worry, my girl…” Riah doesn’t have the time to breathe or scream at the stitch of the needle on her neck. “Because you are going to see him again. All of you, you still have a final lesson to complete.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This a modified version of the creepy lullaby about the Doctor's death that appeared during The Furies in series 3 of The Diary of River Song, sang by Kovarian.[return to text]
> 
> 2\. As you guys have probably noticed, the TARDIS in this fic is kind of an arsehole. She is not Idris/The Doctor's TARDIS. That's mostly what explains her behaviour, she is mostly a Trickster Mentor than a loving mother.[return to text]
> 
> 3.This is a reference to[The Oubliette of Eternity](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Oubliette_of_Eternity)which was a artefact that the Time Lord used to erase people from history. Appeared in the Big Finish story _Neverland_.[return to text]
> 
> 4.[Like for the planet in TARDIS wikia.](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Gidi)[return to text]
> 
> 5\. Adaptation of a similar scene that happened in _The Lady in the Lake_ , in series 3 from _The Diary of River Song._ [return to text]
> 
> ## Some other notes about the characterization:
> 
>   * Both Kovarian and Lake have some [Adaptational Badass](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationalBadass) and [Adaptational Villainy](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationalVillainy) since they are both a little more competent and cunning than their canon counterparts and that they are both Time Lords.
>   * In the original audio drama, Rindle was a secondary character murdered by Lake before the story began and therefore he and River met, but I liked his defiance of Rindle compared with his submissive siblings so I decided to make some [Adaptation Expansion.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationExpansion)
> I hope you liked it, comments are really appreciated!PS: I'm sorry if the footnotes aren't working.


**Author's Note:**

> Find me: [here.](https://ambitious-witch.tumblr.com/)


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